


Curtain Call

by bakerloo



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Theatre, obscene amount of romeo and juliet references, past regan/toni
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28780032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakerloo/pseuds/bakerloo
Summary: “This is going to be so much fun, Toni,” Martha says distractedly, as she scrawls down her own name. “And this means that I can properly introduce you and Shelby at auditions! You guys can now officially become friends!”Across the cafeteria, Toni accidentally makes eye contact with Shelby, sitting at a table surrounded by other glamorous shiny girls in expensive clothes with sleek ponytails, Andrew Johnson next to her with an arm slung around her shoulders. Shelby’s expression is inscrutable, green eyes piercing, and Toni uncharacteristically is the first to break eye contact.Yeah, right, she thinks. Friends.What a fucking joke.or, after an accident that results in her suspension from the basketball team, Toni’s social worker encourages her to join the all-girls school production of 'Romeo and Juliet'. There, she meets Shelby.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 308
Kudos: 649





	1. Chapter 1

Martha has all the subtlety of a dump truck, so when at lunch she tentatively breaches, “Toni...” Toni is ready.

“No way.”

“You haven’t even heard what I’m going to say!”

This is true, except years of friendship means that Toni doesn’t need to in order to know what Martha’s about to ask. Toni’s not blind; she’s seen the twenty odd times Martha has cast a longing glance at the _SPRING PRODUCTION SIGN-UPS!_ sheet on the bulletin board, and she is nothing if not an opportunist.

“Martha,” Toni says, “I’m not signing up with you to do a fucking play.”

Martha actually pouts a little, like she’d genuinely seen this conversation going well and Toni has just dashed her hopes. Toni isn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted. “But—”

“Nope.”

“Think how fun it would be!”

“Then do it yourself.”

“But I want to do it with you.”

Toni just scowls a little. They both watch as Rachel and Nora Reid – Toni likes to call them the battery twins, mostly because they’re so different from one another it’s almost laughable – walk up to the sheet and write their names down.

“Since when have you liked acting anyway?” Toni says. “Isn’t dance more your thing?”

“I wanted to expand my repertoire. Besides, now that jingle competition season is over I have a lot of free time because I’m not doing dance class anymore, so Mom said that I should sign up. It was either this or hockey.”

“What about art? Wind orchestra? _Sewing_?”

Martha puffs out her chest, a little imperiously. “No, I want to do acting. I’ve been practicing the Gone Girl monologue in my mirror; I think I’m getting really good at it.”

Even though she’s a little exasperated, Toni has to smile at that. They’d watched that film together, and Martha had spent half the time ducked under her duvet. Toni, meanwhile, had been completely rapt in awe, the plate of nachos in her lap completely forgotten. They’ve watched it a few more times since then, and every time the duvet shrinks lower and lower down Martha’s face. Toni should have known that under it she was mouthing along half the words.

She opens her mouth to respond, but the words effectively die on her tongue when across the cafeteria she spots Regan. She’s weaving through the tables carrying her clarinet case, with a group of girls Toni vaguely recognises from orchestra. One of them must say something funny, because then Regan throws her head back in laughter, long dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, and even in the bustle of the hundreds of other students around Toni still hears the sound of her laugh cutting through the din, clear as a bell. Regan turns her head back to look at one of the girls, but her gaze accidentally snags on Toni’s, and Toni quickly looks down at her lap, feeling her ears burn.

 _Fuck_.

She counts five beats before risking a glance back upwards, but by then Regan is just a swish of plaid skirt through the doors, and Toni watches her retreating back for as long as she dares.

Martha follows her gaze across the cafeteria, and when she turns back to her, her face is lined in sympathy. “Toni...” she begins, softly; reaches out slowly across the table like she’s meaning to take her hand.

But Toni’s had enough with pity. Abruptly, she pulls her hand back. “You should sign up,” she says. “But I’m not going to.”

“Won’t you even just think about it?”

“Just did. Still no.”

“What if I put together a really convincing PowerPoint? With bar charts?”

“Marty, come on. Do I look like the kind of person who would enjoy being in a school play? Do you know me at all?”

Martha jabs a finger at her. “I know you enough to know you have hidden depths!”

“I told you that album wasn’t mine.”

“Who’s the one who knows all the words to Before He Cheats out of the two of us, Toni? Hm?”

Okay. She has her there. “Whatever. Everyone likes Carrie Underwood. Still doesn’t mean I’m signing up.” Martha’s smug look fades a little, and Toni can’t help the way something tugs in her stomach at the sight. “Okay, what’s this really about, Marty?”

“Well, I just—” Martha looks supremely uncomfortable. “I just thought that since— you know... you’re not doing basketball anymore... that maybe you’d want something new to fill your time. I just thought that we could find a hobby to do together.”

Toni swallows down the lump that forms in her throat. “Name one similarity between basketball and a play.”

“Thirst for blood?”

“I don’t get to legally body-slam anyone.”

“You technically couldn’t do that in basketball,” Martha says. When Toni gives her an evil look, she hurriedly adds, “But you certainly patented it as your signature move and it paid off.”

“Whatever.”

“They’re both team-building.”

Toni actually snorts a little. “Team-building? With who, the battery twins? Pass.”

Martha frowns at the direction Nora and Rachel disappeared in. “Do you think they practice wicca? They seem like the type. All quiet and mysterious.”

Evidently Martha has never been around Rachel Reid. The basketball team would occasionally have to share a gym with the diving team whenever they were practicing on the mats, and Toni is pretty sure that Rachel was a dictator in one of her past lives. She has the crazy eyes.

Toni’s eyes drift back to the bulletin board. She’s just considering the merits of maybe sucking it up if it means that much to Martha – it probably won’t be that awful, not if Martha’s with her – when, at that moment, she spots a very familiar blonde ponytail swan its way up to the sign-up sheet.

Instantly, she feels any potential in her shrivel up. If she needed any more convincing, she sure as fuck doesn’t now.

“Oh, _fuck_ no,” she says. “I’m not doing a play with Shelby fucking Goodkind.”

Martha frowns and hooks her elbow over the back of her chair, craning her neck to see Shelby signing her name up for the auditions, no doubt in sleek fountain pen ink that came in a set costing more than Toni’s sneakers. Toni just sits back and folds her arms, feeling her teeth grit even at the sight of her and her stupid perky blonde fucking hair and designer clothes and cross necklace.

It’s not like she hates Shelby Goodkind: of course not. She’s stared long enough at Martha’s bedroom wall covered in inspirational Pinterest quotes about kindness and loving your enemies enough to know that hating someone is a waste of time and energy. Still, it doesn’t meant she has to fucking like her, either. There’s just something inexplicable about Shelby that grates at her, maybe something about how she’s always wearing that fucking smile, gracious and kind and so fucking fake it makes Toni want to rip her hair out; or maybe the way she’s in honour roll, every club and every AP club, does pageants and volunteering and mission trips in her free time; or maybe the fact that she’s Little Miss Perfect, never making a single mistake. Just blinking her big green eyes and clutching at the cross around her neck like she’s the fucking Virgin Mary. Toni feels the crease in her eyebrows grow even deeper when Shelby turns and catches sight of Martha, and then lifts her hand to give her a small wave. Martha waves back, and when she turns back, she’s wearing the dopiest fucking grin Toni’s ever seen.

Okay, so maybe Toni hates her just a little.

“I’m definitely signing up now,” Martha says, half to herself, as she situates herself in her seat. “It’s gonna be a lot of fun with Shelby there.”

If possible, Toni feels her scowl deepen. “I don’t get why you’re all in love with her and whatever,” she mutters, reaching for one of her carrot sticks. “She’s such a pain in the ass.”

“I don’t see why you don’t like her, Toni. She’s actually really nice.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she is.” Toni crunches down hard on the carrot. “Like a yeast infection.”

Martha gives her a fondly exasperated look. “Toni.”

“Sorry, Marty. I love you but there are some lines I can’t cross.”

“You’re such a drama queen. What’s the problem?”

Toni raises her eyebrows, and sardonically gestures at herself.

“Just because Shelby’s religious doesn’t mean she’s homophobic,” Martha says primly.

“Did she tell you that?”

“She’s really nice. She volunteers at soup kitchens on the weekend.”

“Oh, I’m sure she does.” Toni finishes her carrot, making sure to crunch down loud on the end in a way that makes Martha just roll her eyes fondly, and then stands. “Look, I need to go, Ms Peters needed to see me about extra credit.”

Martha catches her wrist as she’s leaving. “Can you at least think about it?” she says. “For me?”

Toni pauses a little, mouth twisting. They both know that her mind’s already made up: but at the pleading look in Martha’s eyes, she relents, just a little. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll think about it.”

Martha smiles, and lets her go. “Thanks, Toni. You won’t regret it.”

“Yeah, yeah, Blackburn. Have fun without me.”

*

By the time Toni gets home, Nicole is already there.

She’s sat around the little camper table they use for dinner, looking out of place amongst all the second-hand furniture and toys in her heels and pantsuit. Linn, Toni’s foster mom, awkwardly hovers nearby, clutching the electric kettle in her hands as though she’s ready to pounce any time the tea in Nicole’s mug dips below a certain point.

They both look up when Toni pushes in, and Nicole smiles at the sight of her. “Ah, Toni,” she says. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

“Where were you, Toni?” Linn cuts in, a little shrewdly. “I told you Nicole would be visiting tonight.”

“I forgot. Sorry.”

Toni doesn’t miss the way Linn shoots an apologetic glance at Nicole, close-lipped with an emphatic eyebrow raise. _Sorry about her_. It’s condescending in the way Toni has gotten used to adults being around her, like she’s a wild thing in a cage that won’t learn to behave, a pet that peed on the carpet in front of company. Toni’s hand tightens around the strap of her bag.

Thankfully, Nicole barely registers it, putting the mug down on the table and looking Toni in the eyes. “Shall we go somewhere with a little more privacy?” she says.

Linn immediately leaps up. “I can clear the kids from the living room—”

“Don’t worry, Linn, we’ll just go on a walk through the park. That should be fine, right, Toni?”

Toni nods.

“Great,” Nicole says. “Let me get my jacket.”

The night air is chilly when they step out of the trailer, the sun already sunken low behind the tree line, thin grass dark blue in the watery moonlight. Toni tucks her hands into the pocket of her jacket, which she didn’t even have time to take off. Nicole leads them to one of the picnic benches, pulling out a cigarette and a lighter from the inside of her coat, which is long and expensive-looking. Toni can’t help but feel a little shabby in comparison, in her thin grubby anorak and shorts, bare legs prickling in the breeze.

“So, Toni,” Nicole says, after they’ve both sat down and she’s had a deep drag of her cigarette. Toni turns her feet in under the table, wriggling her toes in her sneakers. “How are you?”

“Okay,” Toni says. “You got a haircut.”

“Did I?” Nicole smooths her hair behind her ears. It’s shorter than it was six months ago, the last time she visited. This time it comes just above her shoulders. It’s too dark to tell properly but it looks like she’s had highlights put in as well. “You didn’t.”

Toni hunches her shoulders and tips her head, so her ponytail can hit the small of her back. “I like it long.”

“Do you ever brush it?”

“Not really.”

“Probably a bit of a hassle for sports, don’t you think?”

Right. So they’re doing this now. “Lucky I’m not doing any sports now.”

“Mm.” Nicole stubs her cigarette out on the table, tucks it back in her pocket. Toni watches with listless eyes as she laces her fingers together and rests her arms on the table. “You know why I’m here, then.”

“Surprised you didn’t come earlier.”

“Linn insisted she had it under control.”

Toni snorts mirthlessly. Linn did not have it under control. Her solution was grounding Toni for two days, as though Toni had anyone aside from Martha to ground her from anymore, and then just hover anxiously since then, like she’s afraid pushing her any one way will cause her to snap again. “She wanted to put me in anger management.”

Nicole raises an eyebrow. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Are you gonna do it?”

“Do you feel like you need it?”

“Do I really have a say?”

“Anger management doesn’t work unless you’re willing to admit that your anger needs managing.”

Toni clenches her hands into fists. “It was just a bad day.”

“Toni, you broke a girl’s car window.”

“I know.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t press charges.”

Pressing charges would have been kinder, Toni thinks. She doesn’t say that. “I know.”

Nicole sighs, clearly frustrated, and unlaces her fingers. She traces a circle on the top of the picnic table. “Have you taken any time to consider what you’re going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think it might be beneficial if you get involved back in the school community.”

Toni gives her a look. “Do you want me to join the fucking cheer squad?”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “No, of course not. But Linn tells me that ever since you were suspended from the basketball team you’ve become quite closed in and standoffish.”

Toni sort of resents the accusation that Linn didn’t think she was standoffish before then. She’ll have to try harder. “Does she also tell how many shits I take a day? Tell me, how are my iron levels?”

“She’s just looking out for you.”

“I don’t want to get involved in the school community. I want to get back on the team.”

“Well, you know that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

Four fucking months. That’s how soon it is. Toni looks down at the table. “I’m being patient.”

Nicole snorts a little. Toni can’t really say she blames her; she’s not exactly known for patience. “Come on, Toni. There must be something you like.”

“I’ve always had a secret love for sword-swallowing.”

“Look, Toni. I’ll be honest with you. The reports Linn has been sending back have not been positive. You need to show signs that you aren’t regressing.”

“Would I be put in a different foster home if I don’t?”

“Don’t sound hopeful. No. Although if you keep exhibiting these antisocial behaviours there may be a need for intervention.”

Suddenly Toni’s mouth goes a little sour. “You mean, like... therapy?”

“If it comes to that.”

“I don’t need therapy.”

“No one’s saying that. But if you keep isolating yourself then Linn – and myself – may feel like you would benefit from it. Come on, isn’t there something you can do at school? Do you like music? Can’t you join a choir?”

Unbidden, Toni’s mind flashes back to lunchtime: Martha’s hopeful face, _I thought we could do it together_. The battery twins; Shelby fucking Goodkind and her stupid fucking ponytail. Jesus fuck.

Reluctantly, Toni says, “There’s the school play.”

Nicole’s face brightens. “That would be great, Toni. Are you going to sign up?”

You’re doing this for Martha. “I guess I could. But not acting. I’ll do set, or something. Would that be enough?”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “Yes, that would be enough, Martyr Marianne. What about doing something for the pure enjoyment?”

“I enjoy basketball.”

“We’ve ruled that one out for the foreseeable future.”

“Then I guess I’m not doing anything out of pure enjoyment, then.” Toni folds her arms. “Are we done?”

Nicole heaves a put-about sigh that Toni suspects is mostly for show. (Mostly. She also acknowledges she is difficult to deal with.) “Yes,” she says, “we’re done. What a slave-driver you are; you make me wonder why I ever chose to become a social worker.”

“You mean it’s not for my company?”

“Your company ages me ten years every time I see you,” Nicole says, but when she stands, brushing down the seat of her pants, she winks. Toni can’t help the way the small close-lipped smile that hints at the edge of her lips in return. She doesn’t think she will ever love Nicole – she has never particularly cared for authority, especially not authority in charge of her foster placement who also has a vested interest in her wellbeing – talk about fake – but she has to begrudgingly admit: it could be a hell of a lot worse. Nicole at least gets her, gets that she’s prickly and pugnacious and a bit of the pain in the ass, accepts that she can’t change that: unlike Linn, who takes every bad mood as a personal insult to her parenting skills.

Besides. The fact that Nicole knew to steer clear of Regan is something Linn could never do.

“You’re coming in?” Toni says, when Nicole starts to follow her back to the trailer.

“I need to go over some assessments with Linn before I leave.”

“You didn’t do that when you were waiting for me?”

“I needed to talk to you before. She mostly gave me lots of tea.” Nicole frowns a little at the reminder. “It’s really not very nice, is it?”

“You’ll shit well tonight.”

Nicole gives her a look.

“Kidding.”

“I can never tell with you.” She climbs the three metal steps and knocks on the door; glances over her shoulder at Toni, still stood in the grass, and raises an eyebrow. “You’re welcome to stay and discuss with us, if you want.”

Toni wrinkles her nose. “Pass.”

Linn opens the door to the sound of Nicole’s laugh, anxiously ushering them inside like she’s worried in the ten minutes they were outdoors they both caught the chill of their lives. Toni notices Nicole’s abandoned mug on the sideboard has been filled again, and she smirks a little at the faint look of displeasure that crosses Nicole’s face when she sees.

“How did it go?” Linn says to Nicole, as though Toni’s not there.

“Good,” Nicole says. “Toni’s thinking about joining the school play.”

Linn poorly conceals her surprise. “Really?”

Toni would have flipped Nicole off if she didn’t know that Linn would ground her until next year. “Mm.”

“That’s great!” She turns to Nicole. “Right? That’s good?”

“That’s very good.” Nicole catches Toni’s eye. “Toni, do you want to head to your room while Linn and I finish your assessment?”

For this once, Toni doesn’t even feel herself bristle at the patronising tone. Instead, she takes the out for what it is, and escapes.

Jesus Christ. What the hell has she just signed herself up for?

*

Martha, unsurprisingly, is beyond thrilled when Toni reluctantly tells her the next morning that she’s thought long and hard about it and has decided that she will sign up for the play. “Just for set design, though,” she adds immediately, before Martha gets any ideas about them practicing a duologue together for the audition.

If she thought that would prick Martha’s bubble, she was severely wrong. She’s surprised Martha hasn’t physically started floating off the ground. “I’m so excited! Toni, this is going to be so much fun.”

“Yay,” Toni says, pained.

She lets Martha drag her over to the bulletin and write their names down next to each other in her neat loopy handwriting, drawing a heart over the ‘i’s in _Toni Shalifoe_ in a way that even Toni can’t help but smile at. She scans the other names above theirs; doesn’t recognise most of them, except Rachel and Nora’s next to each other, Rachel’s in large scribbly block capitals and Nora’s in a tiny scrawl beneath. Then, directly below: Shelby Goodkind, all in joint cursive, with a swirly Y like she’s ten and writing in her journal.

“This is going to be so much fun, Toni,” Martha says distractedly, as she scrawls down her own name. “And this means that I can properly introduce you and Shelby at auditions! You guys can now officially become friends!”

Across the cafeteria, Toni accidentally makes eye contact with Shelby, sitting at a table surrounded by other glamorous shiny girls in expensive clothes with sleek ponytails, Andrew Johnson next to her with an arm slung around her shoulders. Shelby’s expression is inscrutable, green eyes piercing, and Toni uncharacteristically is the first to break eye contact.

 _Yeah_ , _right_ , she thinks. _Friends_.

What a fucking joke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u enjoyed! lmk what you thought :-]
> 
> i can't promise super regular updates but i will certainly try!


	2. Chapter 2

Toni will be honest: she’s never watched ‘Romeo and Juliet’ before.

She knows the general gist, of course – forbidden romance, two feuding families, set in Venice, or Vienna, or something, by Shakespeare. There’s also something about a balcony and a pool, though this information has come from Martha who seems to have made it her mission to have the play encoded into her DNA by Friday, when the auditions are, and therefore has been doing nothing but watching the Lurhmann version every night. Toni made the mistake of sleeping over one of these nights, and lay on her bedroom floor staring up at the ceiling in the dark as Martha recited the whole movie word-for-word _in her sleep_.

If it were just on principal, and Toni hated her life enough to want to ever put herself in charge of a school play, she’d give Martha the part immediately out of pure dedication. She doesn’t think she’s ever worked that hard for anything before.

What it does, mean, is that by the time auditions roll around on Friday, she’s beginning to start to regret signing up. This week had been hell enough having to watch every version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ over Martha’s shoulder – including, but not limited to, ‘Gnomeo and Juliet’ and around half a dozen amateur performances uploaded to YouTube – and as Martha drags Toni to the auditorium as soon as the bell goes, she realises that by doing this she’s essentially resigning her fate to another three months of it.

Jesus Christ. She’s going to kill herself by Easter.

“I’m thinking version two,” Martha says, as they approach the side of the stage. “I think that gives the most depth and it’s the version that looks the best whenever I rehearse it in the mirror.”

“I don’t get why I have to be here,” Toni says. “I’m not auditioning.”

“You’re my moral support. And technically you’re part of the crew.”

Therapy would absolutely be better than this. Toni doesn’t know why she thought for a second that listening to people recite Shakespeare would be better than sucking it up and lying about her feelings for forty-five minutes a week.

The regret only gets worse when they emerge from the heavy black curtain draped across the wing of the stage and are both immediately accosted by a bright spotlight shining right into their eyes. When they step out of the light, still blinking spots out of their eyes, the first thing Toni’s eyes make out is the face of a teacher she vaguely recognises from assemblies, wearing a blazer and a wide, unsettling smile.

“Girls, _welcome_ ,” she says. Does Toni smell incense? Fuck, she’s in the wrong place. “You are here for the auditions?”

“Hi, Ms Klein,” Martha says. “Sorry we’re late, Toni needed the toilet.”

Toni did not, in fact, need the toilet. She instead locked herself in a cubicle for five minutes and tried to come up with something Martha would buy to get her out of this.

“Don’t worry, we only started a few minutes ago!” the teacher, Ms Klein says. “Come, come. Take off your shoes and join the show circle.”

Toni and Martha exchange a look as Ms Klein turns back around to face the group of people already sat, shoeless, in a ring. “She’s kidding, right?” Toni mutters to Martha.

“I don’t think so,” Martha says, with a grim determination that were it any of situation Toni would find sort of admirable. To Toni’s horror, she actually bends down to unstrap her shoes. “I would’ve worn matching socks if I’d known.”

“I’m not taking my fucking _shoes_ off—”

“Girls?” Ms Klein calls, a touch impatiently.

Martha toes off her last sandal and shoots Toni an imploring look as she pads over to the circle. For a few moments, all Toni can do is stand and gape after her, before she finally scowls down at her grubby sneakers and kicks them off, stalking hurriedly after her. If she’d known she’d be attending a fucking hippie retreat she would have at least picked socks that didn’t weren’t threadbare and didn’t have holes. Her big toe pokes out one sock; her heel through the other. Suddenly she wishes that she was the kind to paint her nails or something. She’s never been fussed about how she looks, sometimes going weeks between shaving when she was on the team and wore sleeveless singlets and basketball shorts, but something about this unfamiliar environment, filled with people she doesn’t know – people who probably only know of her as the girl who smashed Regan’s car window – makes her feel self-conscious, which makes her feel irritated, because why the fuck should she care what they think.

Her irritation only sours further when she sees that Martha has situated herself in the empty space next to Shelby. They’re smiling at each other, Shelby’s mouth finishing the shape of _hi!_ , her hand reached out and squeezing Martha’s, and it’s all she can do to not stomp across the circle to the open spot on Martha’s other side. It’s a close thing, though.

“Welcome, everyone,” Ms Klein says serenely as Toni sits. She then proceeds to smile at everyone in the way Toni only imagines an animal does right before it kills its prey. “I am very glad to see so many eager faces today – this sort of enthusiasm is what promises that we will have secure performance on our hands. I thank you all for showing up on time and being willing to participate.”

With some amusement, Toni notes the perturbed looks on everyone’s faces. Clearly the large turnout – probably the most surprising thing, honestly; there looks to be about forty people – has nothing to do with being _willing to participate_. Absently, she wonders who else was blackmailed into joining.

“As you know, we are staging a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’,” Ms Klein continues. “Today is the day that you will perform a monologue of your own choosing to me so that I can cast all the parts and we can start rehearsing. However, there is something else we must do beforehand. Can anyone tell me what the most important part is when it comes to staging a production?”

The only person who raises their hand is Jeanette Dao, the detention monitor. Toni has spent far too many afternoons staring at her bland, unthreatening face and her eye-searing sweaters that she thinks she’s become conditioned to just feel bored whenever she sees her.

Ms Klein gestures to her. “Jeanette.”

“Firstly, I just want to say, very well-said, Ms Klein,” Jeanette says, and Toni immediately rolls her eyes. “Secondly, to answer your question – the efforts of the director?”

“Close, Jeanette. It is the camaraderie formed between the cast and crew.” God, that’s even worse. “Look around you, ladies and gentlemen. This group of people right here are your family for the next few months. This bond between you will join you for life. This is not just a school play – this is your life blood.”

Right. So Toni’s _pretty_ sure she just joined a cult.

She turns to whisper it to Martha, but as she does, she accidentally meets the gaze of Shelby, who has turned to do the exact same thing. The words die in her mouth, and she tastes something acidic like bile rise in the back of her throat as she watches Shelby beat her to it, murmuring something into Martha’s ear that has her giggling.

What the fuck is she playing at, going after Martha like that? She’s Toni’s best friend, not hers. It’s not like she doesn’t have options, like the whole Barbie squad of other perfect Christian girls who probably do Bible study together and discuss just how gosh-darn sweet their boyfriends are. Martha’s too good to be taken advantage of by someone like Shelby and whatever charitable agenda she’s got going on.

Toni bets _she_ wouldn’t spend all week watching ‘Romeo + Juliet’ with her out of solidarity.

Her attention is brought back to the circle when Ms Klein makes everyone stand up and hold hands. The boy on the other side of her holds her hand gingerly as though she’s going to turn and bite him, which makes her want to do just that. Ms Klein first makes them go around in a circle and say their name and one secret – literally, what the fuck – to “kickstart the bond”, as she claims. It mostly makes Toni want to kick _her_. The urge only grows when Jeanette passes to her and she says, “I know I’m a teacher, but to show that in this room we are all equals, you may call me Gretchen.” And then her secret is about how she hates heels, believes they are a symbol of the patriarchy, but wears them anyway because she thinks they make her legs look good. She says this with a wink, like they’re all in on the joke, but only Jeanette laughs. Toni thinks it would have been kinder if she didn’t; everyone else just looks they’d rather be anywhere else.

After, Ms Klein – or Gretchen, she begrudgingly supposes – leads them through twenty minutes of daffy warm-up games, going around in a circle and throwing beanbags and imaginary footballs at each other, which somehow is even worse. Toni doesn’t think she’s ever been as humiliated as she was when she had to pretend to throw a basketball at someone across the circle, and it’s not like the bar was very fucking high, either.

At least she got to see Shelby do it too. That at least makes her feel a little better.

Finally, when Toni is genuinely considering whether it would be worth it throw herself into the orchestra pit, Gretchen announces that the auditions shall commence, and for everyone to line up along the back of the stage so they can wait for their names to be called. Toni, unsure, hovers awkwardly as everyone troops to the back, and then hesitantly approaches Gretchen when she doesn’t notice, back turned as she rifles through papers on top of the table she’s got set up.

“Uh, Ms Kl—Gretchen?” she says. Gretchen glances up. “Uh, I’m just helping with set, you said that was okay?”

Gretchen’s face clears. “Oh, of course. Toni, was it? You can sit with Jeanette and I at the front of here. Just grab a chair from the rack.”

Thank Jesus. Toni sends up a silent prayer of thanks as she scurries off to hunt for a chair. When she returns, dragging behind the only fold-up chair she could find with all four legs still intact, Gretchen and Jeanette have already set up, sitting pompously behind the table like they’re on fucking America’s Got Talent or something. Most interestingly, though, is the other girl sat next to them, looking like she’s about to kill anything that gets too close.

Toni slides the chair next to her.

“Hey,” she says.

The girl cuts a sidelong glance at her. Toni recognises her – she sits in the chair behind her in Trig and chews gum with her mouth open so everyone can hear. Today she is wearing hoop earrings so big that they touch her shoulders. “I didn’t say you could sit next to me.”

“Can I?”

“Sure.”

Toni does.

“Hey,” the girl says, “aren’t you the girl who broke a door?”

“Smashed a window, actually,” Toni says, because she may as well own it. With all the insane rumours flying around school the least she can do is at make sure the stories being shared are at least credible. “And yeah.”

The girl just nods sagely. “Respect,” she says. “The most I ever did was scratch a guy’s car.”

“With a key?”

“My nails.”

Toni is sort of impressed. “That’s fucking metal.”

“Worth the ruined manicure.”

“What did you write?”

“Tried for motherfucker. Got tired. Just says moth.”

“I feel like that’s infinitely creeper.”

“If the son of the bitch didn’t believe in the mothman he sure does now.” The girl adjusts her earrings. Toni reckons she could probably fit her fist through one of them. “Why are you here, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re telling me a bad bitch like you likes theatre?”

“Maybe I have hidden depths.”

“Babe, you’re wearing a sports jacket. No you don’t.”

Toni accepts this. “Sort of blackmailed into it.”

The girl snorts. “Feel you on that.”

“You, too?”

The girl rolls her eyes. “I somehow got put in charge of doing the orchestral arrangement,” she says, and for the first time Toni notices the cello case lying behind them, labelled with _Fatin Jadmani_. “Write the music for it, she said. It’ll be fun, she said. As it turns out, old Gretch and I have varying definitions of what fun really is.” This is said with remarkable confidence considering old Gretch herself is sat only five feet away discussing something with Jeanette. “She tried to get me to write actual songs for it and I had to draw the line there. It’s enough I have to waste my time outside of school composing music, but putting words to them? Absolutely not.”

Toni regards her. “I wouldn’t think of you as someone who plays the cello.”

The girl, Fatin, gives her a salacious wink. “Hidden depths.”

Toni only has time to smile back at her before Gretchen is loudly clapping her hands. “All right, everyone, listen up,” she says, and everyone milling around the back of the stage turn to glance at her. “How it’s going to work is I will call your name and you will step forward and do your monologue. You will be judged not only on performance but delivery and emotional intent. We will all” – and at this she gestures to the four of them at the table; belatedly, Toni realises that she is included in this – “be making notes, so try and perform to all of us, not just one. This will be good practice for performing in front of an audience and making everyone feel seen.”

Across the stage, Martha gives Toni a big thumbs-up. She’s probably ecstatic that she has an in on the judge’s table, even though Toni knows jackshit about performing. Still, she doesn’t need to know how much work Martha’s put into this audition. She could do anything short of swan-diving into the orchestra pit or kicking Gretchen right in the face and Toni would still give her full marks. (Although Martha kicking Gretchen in the face would be amazing.) Toni can’t help herself and does a pompous queen’s wave back, and Martha sticks up her middle finger.

She can’t help the way her gaze travels to Shelby standing next to her. She doesn’t look so smug now: instead, she almost looks panicked. Maybe it makes her a bad person, but Toni can’t help but feel a little vindictive. _Take that, Christian girl_ , she thinks. _Your fate in this play is in my hands. Good luck trying to steal Martha with your role as Villager 4._

The first person to be called is Martha. She practically skips over, face radiant. She seems to be the only one who really wants to be here. Even Rachel Reid has her arms folded and is watching her impatiently, foot tapping.

“Hello, Martha,” Gretchen says. “And what monologue will you be performing for us?”

“ _Romeo, Romeo, where art thou Romeo_.”

“And your song?”

“Oh, I didn’t prepare one.”

Gretchen frowns. “You... didn’t?”

“I thought it was optional.”

“Martha,” she says, “you realise we are doing a musical adaptation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, don’t you?”

For the first time all day, Martha’s wide smile falters. “What?”

“It is imperative you perform a song for us.”

“Uh...” Martha’s gaze flicks to Toni’s, panicked. Nowhere in her meticulously planned audition did they account for this. Toni shrugs helplessly. “Yes. Yes. I can... I can do a song.”

She warbles her way through Juicy by The Notorious B.I.G., during which the skin around Gretchen’s eyes gets tighter and tighter. Fatin, meanwhile, looks like this is the best thing that’s happened to her all day. When she’s finished, Toni and Shelby are the only ones who clap. Toni makes sure to clap the loudest.

“Well,” Gretchen says, finally. “That was... something.”

“Can I do my monologue now?”

“Take it away.”

Thankfully, the monologue goes much better – so well, actually, that Toni notices Jeanette covertly scratch out _complete amateur_ in her Hello Kitty notebook. Afterwards, Toni gives her a standing ovation, but this time she’s not the only one clapping: even Gretchen looks moderately impressed.

“Thank you, Martha,” she says. “That was certainly... enlightening.”

Martha grouses all the way back to the line. Toni tries for an optimistic thumbs-up and mouths, _I think you killed it_ , and Martha just pouts across the room at her. She’s about to stand up to go comfort her until, of course, fucking Shelby gets there first, putting her arms around her shoulders and hugging her close.

Toni’s lip curls.

Next up is Dot Campbell, with whom Toni takes Woodshop. All Toni knows about her is that her birdhouse was hella lopsided and she can’t glue gun for shit, but she turns out to be a decent enough actress. Her song is good – for some reason a Christmas carol – amusedly, Toni sees Martha turn around three times in the background – and her monologue is pretty well-executed. Mostly she just sounds like she’d rather be anywhere else, including the dentist, or the mouth of an active volcano. Still, as she walks away, Toni sees Gretchen draw a star by her name, which Jeanette quickly does as well. Then Toni realises she should also be taking notes, so she draws a star by Dot’s name too, and then two by Martha’s. When she glances over at Fatin, she sees her drawing an eye.

After Dot is Rachel, who unsurprisingly recites her monologue like it’s a complaint letter. Toni never thought the phrase “arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon” could sound so much like a threat. She sees Gretchen write _Tybalt??_ in her notes. After Rachel comes Nora, and is like Rachel in that she delivers the whole thing one-note, except unlike Rachel, the note seems to be somewhere near the level of excitement Toni feels whenever a teacher announces that there’s a pop quiz.

Battery twins indeed.

There are a few more people who audition, the only notable one being Leah from her Lit class, who delivers her monologue surprisingly well considering the last time she had to read aloud she started crying. (Rumour has it she’d just broken up with her boyfriend who was thirty and also apparently the author of the book, but Toni still judges her a little. Not that she has any room to, considering how she’s historically dealt with being broken up with.) If anything, the minutes seem to get longer the more Toni hears the same monologues being performed again and again. Fatin has somehow fallen asleep with her eyes open, which Toni knows because she’s started snoring. Even Jeanette begins to wilt in her pink cardigan, writing increasingly less and less as each person goes.

And then, last but not least: Shelby.

Toni thinks it’s some sick twist of fate that Shelby goes last. Of course she’s last – the cherry on top of an already terrible afternoon filled with too many Les Mis songs is having Shelby fucking Goodkind chirp her way through probably _Seek Ye First_. Toni’s glad that _that’s_ the thing she’s going to go home thinking about. She’ll even take whatever the hell Rachel did. At least it would send her to sleep with a smile instead of a frown.

“Hello, Shelby,” Gretchen says, when Shelby steps up to the table. As she does, she flicks a nervous glance to Toni, and Toni won’t deny how fucking good it feels to finally have her under her thumb. “What monologue will you be performing today?”

“ _What light through yonder window breaks_.”

Of fucking course she is. Basic.

“And your song?”

“Day by Day.”

Toni doesn’t really know what she’s expecting, to be honest. She thinks she remembers Martha mentioning that Shelby sings in the church choir, so she’s not expecting her to be tone-deaf, but she’s also not expecting greatness. The universe isn’t going to give someone who looks like Shelby a good voice, too – that just wouldn’t be fair.

But then Shelby starts to sing.

And yeah, okay. She’s really fucking good.

In her peripheral, she’s aware of Gretchen sitting up in surprise, and for the first time in hours Jeanette’s pen starts to speed up across her page. But Toni feels rooted to her chair, unable to do anything except just stare at her.

Since when could she do that? For how long has she been harbouring this kind of _voice_?

The song ends too soon, and for a few long moments the room is completely quiet. Even Fatin has woken up. Across the stage, Martha’s jaw is on the floor. And then Gretchen starts to clap, and everyone immediately follows suit, the loudest everyone’s clapped all day. Something spiteful inside Toni wants to blame it on the fact that Shelby’s the last audition and therefore everyone gets to go home after this, but she can’t even relish in her spite because she knows that that’s not true – that Shelby’s just that good. That, even though she’d rather eat her pants than admit it, she’s really fucking talented.

“That was amazing, Shelby!” Gretchen says. “Just—fantastic!”

Shelby glows a little, turning her feet inwards. “Thank you, Ms Klein.”

“Do we even need to hear your monologue?” This is said to Jeanette, who looks incensed at the idea that they would do anything otherwise.

“Of course we do.”

“Very well.” Gretchen sits back and waves her pen. “Go on, Shelby.”

But Toni can see her page. And written on it, right in the middle, by Shelby’s name, underlined three times: _have we found our Juliet?_


	3. Chapter 3

“Hurry _up_!” Martha says through the phone. “I’m dying here!”

Toni takes one hand off the handlebars to adjust her phone from where it’s wedged between her ear and her shoulder and nearly goes careering sideways. “Jesus, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

She pedals at a lightning speed through the school gates. As she draws nearer, she sees Martha anxiously waiting by the bike rack, practically vibrating in anticipation; when Martha catches sight of her, her face lights up and she waves. “Toni, come _on_!”

Toni is already throwing her leg over the seat of the bike before it’s even stopped, grinding to a halt with a spray of gravel and squeal of breaks. As quick as she can, she fumbles for her bike chain slung around the top tube, which is made difficult with the way Martha keeps tugging at her coat, chanting, “Hurry hurry hurry.”

“Shit,” Toni hisses the third time the key glances off the lock and scrapes against her thumbnail. She grits her teeth and tries again; thank Jesus, fourth time is the charm, because the key glides in and the lock clicks into place. As soon as it does, Martha grabs her arm and drags her away, Toni just managing to retrieve the key and pocket it before Martha pulls her inside school, pushing past the swarms of students still blinking sleep out of their eyes to make her way to the bulletin, where the cast list was pinned up ten minutes ago.

“What do you think I got?” Martha says. “Do you think I might have had a shot at Juliet? Did Gretchen say anything?”

Toni, mostly on principal, had decided to refrain from telling Martha anything about the notes Gretchen had taken during auditions, only that she had made sure to put lots of stars around Marth’s name when she handed in her own notes for consideration.

She is beginning to regret this.

“I mean, I know obviously Shelby’s audition was really good,” Martha continues, “but do you think she might have been too good for Juliet? I think Gretchen might give her Rosaline and give more of an underdog Juliet – you know, just to avoid going with the obvious choice.”

Toni’s never doing anything on principal ever again. Morality can suck her ass.

They reach the cafeteria probably in record time, which is filled with last-minute stragglers doing homework or hunched over tables sleeping. Martha weaves her way through the tables, dragging Toni behind her, to the back of the room, where there is already a small huddle of people Toni recognises from the auditions. Unfortunately, Shelby and her fucking ponytail is one of them.

Martha pauses a little hesitantly on the edges of the huddle, like she’s steeling herself to start doing the apology-and-shuffle, but Toni spares no time, barking, “Out the way” and pulling her through as the group parts like the red sea. She catches sight of Shelby’s wide green eyes, sparkling with disbelief and joy, and pauses, already able to tell which part she landed, but Martha doesn’t notice, stepping so close to the list her nose is mere inches away, eyes roving it eagerly.

Toni begrudgingly joins her. Her eyes scan the list, catching on her name at the very top with _crew_ , and distantly taking in all the others as somewhere in the background Martha exclaims, dismayed, “I’m the _Nurse_?”

_Dorothy Campbell – Romeo Montague_

_Martha Blackburn – Juliet’s Nurse_

_Rachel Reid – Tybalt_

_Nora Reid – Friar Lawrence_

_Leah Rilke – Benvolio_

_Jeanette Dao – Mercutio_

And then, at the very bottom:

_Shelby Goodkind – Juliet Capulet_

*

“I just don’t understand,” Martha says. “I thought I really nailed my audition.”

Toni looks up from where she’s lacing her sneakers. “You rapped. For a Shakespeare play.”

“They rap in Hamilton.”

“You understand how that’s different.”

Martha sighs. “Yeah.”

Toni sits up and bumps their shoulders together, and Martha smiles at her. Together, they watch as the auditorium slowly begin to fill up with the rest of the cast, everyone dragging chairs behind them and huddling in small groups. Across the room, surrounded by blank sheet music, tuning her cello, sits Fatin, who shoots anyone who dares approach a dark look.

“I mean, I’m happy for Shelby,” Martha continues. “Really. I think she’ll make a great Juliet, and if I had to be the Nurse to anyone, I’m glad it’s Shelby. I’m mostly just annoyed I won’t be able to dance. Do you think if I asked Gretchen would write in a dance solo?”

Toni glances up at her, grinning. “For the Nurse?”

“I’ve won competitions.”

“I don’t think your skill is the issue here, Marty.”

“Maybe during one of Romeo and Juliet’s songs she can jingle in the background.”

The image is enough to nearly make Toni laugh at loud. “Please tell Gretchen that.”

Martha looks pleased at this, but before she can say anything else, Shelby arrives, carrying a cardboard box. “Hey, y’all,” she says. “Gretchen just left this at reception for us – it just says that she’ll be late but she wants us to start doing our first read-through until she arrives. Everyone, take a script!”

Martha jumps to her feet and drags Toni over as Shelby rests the box on the floor. Toni guesses that it would probably be helpful if she at least knew what the fuck she was stage-designing, so she begrudgingly takes one, flicking through it. Next to her, she is aware of Martha doing the same, scanning each page for any Nurse lines.

“I think we should all write our names and our characters in them,” Shelby says. “Just so none get lost!”

“What should we put, then?” says a voice, and Toni turns to see Fatin next to her, snapping at a piece of gum. “Blackmailed by higher powers gang?”

Toni snorts and snaps her book closed. “I’m not writing anything.”

Fatin stares down forlornly at her own copy. “Please don’t be shit,” she says to it. “The college cred won’t be worth it if I emerge emotionally damaged.”

“Should we get in a circle or something?” Dot says. “To do the read-through?”

Shelby claps her hands together. “Great idea!”

Together, everyone scours backstage until they’ve found enough chairs for everyone to sit on, arranging them in a circle. Amusedly, Toni notes that out of everyone present, there are only two boys, and she’s pretty sure she remembers their names being in the ensemble. From what she knows of Gretchen – which, admittedly, is not a lot, aside from the fact she signs off her faculty emails with _Gretchen Klein, head of the drama department, Gemini, feminist – down with the patriarchy!_ – she would bet money on that not being coincidental.

“All right, y’all,” Shelby says, once everyone is seated. She’s sat next to Martha again, which makes Toni irrationally irritated; she’s also wearing a pink dress that unfairly flatters her lips, which makes Toni even more irritated. “So I thought that we should go around in a circle and introduce ourselves and say what part we’re playing. I know that when we were all checking the list it was quite high adrenaline, or at least it was for me, so not everyone might’ve seen the full least and what everyone was playing. Then after we can start reading through the script! I’ll go first – I’m Shelby, hi everyone, and I’m playing Juliet.” She looks over at Martha, who waves at the circle.

“Hi! I’m Martha and I’m playing Juliet’s Nurse.”

It’s Toni’s turn now. She opens her mouth but before she can Fatin swings an arm over her shoulders. “I’m Fatin and this is my bitch Toni,” she says. “We’re the crew.”

Shelby’s face pinches a little. Toni press her lips together and turn away so she doesn’t start laughing.

Next to Fatin is Dot, who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. “Hey,” she says. “Uh, I’m Dot, and I’m playing Romeo.”

Fatin looks delighted. Shelby, however, sits up, frowning. “Wait,” she says, “Dottie, _you’re_ playing Romeo?”

Dot raises her eyebrows. “Is there a problem?”

“But...” Shelby glances at the two boys across the circle. They shake their heads, and she purses her lips. “Oh. Uh, no. Sorry.”

Dot narrows her eyes at her, but leaves the issue. Next to her Leah starts to introduce herself, but Toni can’t pull her eyes away from Shelby. The way she’s sitting now, stiff-shouldered with her jaw clenched, is such a contrast to the bubbly youth-group counsellor she’d been only minutes ago that it’s as though they were two different people. What’s it Martha had said? _Just because Shelby’s religious doesn’t mean she’s homophobic?_

Yeah. Toni’s not so convinced.

She slouches down in her chair, folding her arms, not taking her eyes off Shelby as the rest of the circle introduce themselves. She notes how the muscle in Shelby’s jaw ticks when the two boys introduce themselves as Alex and Thom and as part of the ensemble, like deep down she’d still been holding out for one of them to reveal that Dot being Romeo was merely a ploy set to test her and that secretly one of them had been cast as her love interest. Toni also knows that Fatin continuing to snigger about it certainly isn’t making matters any better.

“Hey, Dottie,” she whispers, loud enough that half the circle can hear, as Jeanette introduces herself. “You know, I have to ask—”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Dot says dryly, “but I’m not gay.”

Fatin gives a significant look to her cargo pants. “Not even a little?”

“They have good utility!”

“You can’t tell if someone’s gay based on clothing,” Martha whispers. “That’s a superficial generalisation.” She glances at Toni like she’s checking she said it right, and Toni is so, so fond.

“You tell ‘em, Marty.”

“Don’t even chat, girl,” Fatin says. “You’re wearing basketball shorts.”

“Guys,” Shelby cuts in, a little desperately, “is this really appropriate conversation?”

Toni cuts her eyes at her. “Is there a problem, Shelby?”

“I just don’t think we should be talking about this right now.”

“So it has nothing to do with Dot playing Romeo?”

Shelby sits up uncomfortably. _Bingo_ , Toni thinks wryly, with a twisted sense of triumph. “I just,” she says finally, “thought that I’d at least be playing opposite a boy. That’s all.”

“It shouldn’t be that hard to pretend. After all, you believe in God, don’t you?”

Shelby’s face hardens, but before she can respond the doors fling open and Gretchen herself swans in, carrying a cup of coffee with her glasses perched on her nose. She sees them all sat in a circle with copies of the play on their laps and practically glows. “Good afternoon, everyone,” she says as she sails in, pulling up a chair and placing it between Shelby and Martha. They both have to hurriedly scoot aside their own chairs to let her through as she collapses in her seat. “I see we all have our scripts! Thank you very much, Shelby.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Klein,” Shelby says. She doesn’t look at Toni.

Toni should feel glad. But there is something festering in the pit of her stomach that tells her she may have stepped over the line.

“Had we started a read-through?” Gretchen asks her.

“We’ve just finished going around and introducing ourselves and what character we’re playing.”

“Oh, excellent.” Gretchen produces her own copy of the play, peering through her glasses at it. “In that case, everyone turn to act 1 scene 1 and we can start from there.”

Toni becomes bored very, very quickly. By the third scene she’s yawning into her hand, slumped so far down in her chair that Martha has to keep kicking her ankle so she can straighten before she slides right off. Shakespeare has never been the most scintillating of material, and that’s a consensus Toni pulled from years of studying it in her Lit classes when she was actively engaged. Now that she’s just sat staring mindlessly at the words with nothing to do does she realise just how dull he can be.

Fatin evidently shares this sentiment, because halfway through scene 5, Toni feels a nudge against her leg, and she blinks open her eyes to see that in the blank pages at the beginning of her copy Fatin has written a note. She squints at it.

_How much do you want to bet old Gretch made it a nearly all-female production on purpose?_

Fatin waves the pen at her. Toni takes it.

 _Anything_ to get her mind off this fucking play.

_Do you think anyone’s told her that the matriarchy isn’t cool?_

_I bet she gets off to Margaret Thatcher. Do you think she’s raising Jeanette to be a mini misandrist like her?_

_I’m surprised Jeanette didn’t land Juliet, to be honest._

_She’d be giving her too much power. Gretch needs to keep her humble so she knows her place. Can you play hangman?_

Toni gives her a look.

_What? I don’t know._

_Yes, I can play hangman._

Fatin’s first word is _FUCK ME_ , which Toni feels is pretty apt, and she guesses it almost immediately. Her turn, now, so she writes _boredom_. Fatin gets in three tries.

Back and forth they go, their turns getting sillier and sillier. Fatin writes _Gretchen Weiner_ for one of her rounds, and when Toni gets it – sending a silent prayer up to Martha for that one, who is the only reason she gets the reference – she draws an almost scarily accurate dick on the side of the page, complete with bulging veins and pubic hair. Toni doesn’t have a particularly intimate knowledge of dicks, but shifting from foster family to foster family means she does have a large sample size, and so she does the best she can, giving it glasses and a feminist badge, and Fatin has to jam the end of the pen in her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud.

Toni doesn’t realise quite how long they’ve been playing for until they run out of blank paper in both their copies of the play. They end up having to cram it in the margins of the text, trying to find the pages with the sparsest amounts of dialogue to give them the most space. Even Martha next to her looks over a few times between her scenes and whispers her own guesses. Unsurprisingly, Martha is very good at Hangman. Fatin looks impressed.

Toni eventually runs out of words for her turn, and so starts naming people from the cast. The only one Fatin doesn’t get is Dot, mostly because Toni decided to be an asshole and use _Dorothy_ instead, and then, once they’ve gone around, she starts inventing silly nicknames for everyone. Martha is Nurse Jingle, which Martha herself draws a heart around when she glances over and sees. Gretchen is Old Gretch and Jeanette is Young Gretch, which makes Fatin actually laugh out loud. Fatin’s next turn is _Window-Smasher_ , and though the memory still hasn’t healed over yet, still rubbed raw and blistering, the way Fatin draws a flexing bicep next to it is almost enough for Toni to smile.

 _Mothman_ , she writes next. Fatin kisses the tip of her finger and presses it to the word.

Out of a rapidly dwindling sample size, Toni ends up writing _Shelby Hardass_. Not the most creative, but Fatin sniggers when she works it out and writes _the UST coming from you guys is UNREAL_. Toni doesn’t know what UST is but she has to agree. She looks up to see who else in the circle she can use, but at that moment she accidentally makes eye contact with Shelby herself.

Shelby holds her gaze for a long moment, before it drops down to the book in her lap, and too late Toni remembers that in very large block capitals SHELBY HARDASS is scrawled along the top. She snaps the book closed, but the damage has already been done: Shelby’s eyes lift back to hers, hurt flashing across her face. She purses her lips, and then looks away.

Even though she’s most probably homophobic and Toni has no reason to care about her opinion. she can’t help the way something in her stomach drops.

Fuck.

*

By the time rehearsal ends, what started out as a light drizzle has become a torrential downpour.

Many girls huddle outside the auditorium, shielded by the windowsills of the art department above them, phones pressed to their ears as they try and call various people to try and pick them up so they don’t have to walk home in the rain. Gretchen pulls out an umbrella that honest-to-God is emblazoned with _girl boss_ – Toni gets second-hand embarrassment just looking at it – gives them all a brusque wave, and struts off across the car park, her stilettos splashing in the puddles as she pulls out her car keys.

It’s times like these that Toni is so, so very grateful for Martha, who, as well as being a great friend and the best nacho plater known to man, also:

Has a car.

“Thank fuck for your mom,” Toni breathes as she slides into the passenger seat. Even just the short thirty-second jog across the car park, covering her head with her backpack, has left her jumper uncomfortably damp, chafing around her collar and she plucks at it unhappily, prising one of her wet plaits from under the collar. “Can you tell her I love her when you get home?”

“Of course not,” Martha says. “She doesn’t need another reason to prefer you to me. Seatbelt.”

Begrudgingly, Toni pulls the seatbelt across her chest. Martha smiles proudly to herself in the rearview mirror as she starts the engine.

“What music are you thinking?” Toni says, as she plugs her phone in. “Wait, no, I have an idea.”

“If you play _Juicy_ I’m kicking you out the car.”

Toni hurriedly exits out _Ready To Die_ before Martha can catch a glimpse of her screen. “That’s not what it was gonna be.”

“What was it, then?”

 _Check Yes Juliet_ starts playing through the speakers. Martha says, “You’re funny.”

“I know.”

They lapse into comfortable silence as Martha turns onto the road, just letting the music fade into background noise. Toni lets her head tip against the cool window, watching the town whizz by as the raindrops zigzag sideways down the glass. She always feels a little guilty about asking Martha for lifts because it’s so out of her way, and she can’t deny that even though it’s been years the burn of humiliation of pulling into the trailer park is something that pervades even now. But Martha’s presence is something so comforting, so unexpectant, that even though Toni feels the twinge of discomfort in the back of her head it’s easy to sink down into the worn pleather seats of her mom’s old wheezy Toyota, watching the dream catcher dangle from the rear view mirror and letting the rock of the car lull her into a half-doze.

But then: “Is that Shelby?”

Toni blearily blinks her eyes open and glances over to see Martha frowning intently out of the front window, leaning so far over the steering wheel that her nose is almost touching the glass. She follows her gaze out of it to, sure enough, see Shelby walking along the pavement, backpack held over her head to shield herself from the rain. She’s not wearing a jacket, just a thin sweater over her dress, and her long blond hair has been matted to her scalp, her makeup probably all ruined too.

Toni watches her bare legs with some sympathy. Jesus. She must be freezing.

She glances back over at Martha, but to her horror Martha’s already leaning over to roll down her window. “Martha, what the fuck,” she begins, because they’ve been blasting heat for the past ten minutes and only now have they just achieved a good temperature, but Martha pays her no heed, cranking it down faster.

“Shelby!” she shouts through it, so loudly it nearly blows out Toni’s ear drum. At first, Shelby doesn’t appear to have heard, Martha’s voice drowned out by three lanes of traffic and the roaring rain, but when she tries again, somehow even louder this time, “ _Shelby_!” she finally looks up, eyes wide and dripping rain.

She pauses, doing a double take. “ _Martha_?”

“What are you doing walking in the rain?” Martha shouts.

“This isn’t a very sustainable method of communication,” Toni mutters, trying to dislodge Martha’s elbow from her thigh. It only succeeds in getting Martha’s elbow right between the legs. “Oh, Jesus, Marty, fuck—”

“Shit, sorry,” Martha says, leaning back. She bites her lip, considering, before leaning forward again, thankfully keeping all elbows clear of Toni’s lap, and shouting, “Do you need a ride?”

“A ride?” Shelby blinks. “Oh, gee, Martha, that’s real kind, but I should be fine.”

Even Toni knows that’s bullshit. “Don’t be a martyr, Shelby,” she says, to her own surprise. Shelby blinks at her. “Get in.”

For a few moments, Shelby hovers, unsure, until she looks down at herself and her sodden dress, her long soaked hair, and then makes up her mind. “Okay.”

Quickly, she darts across the street through the traffic lanes. Martha cranes herself between the front seats to pop open the door, and Shelby slides in, bringing with her a rush of cold air and rain and something sweet, like peaches.

Toni pretends she didn’t just think that.

“Oh, Jesus, Shelby,” Martha says, eyes wide. “You’re completely soaked.”

“I’m really sorry about ruining your upholstery,” Shelby says immediately, “I can get my dad to pay for it—”

Martha brushes her off. “Don’t be silly, water doesn’t hurt anyone. You won’t believe the amount of times Toni and I have thrown up in here. I’m more worried about you. Didn’t you bring a jacket or anything?”

In the rearview mirror, Toni sees Shelby shrug, shoulders stiff. She holds herself closely, tightly, like she’s trying to take up as little space as possible, and despite herself Toni feels a pang of sympathy. Doesn’t she know the fucking feeling. "My car's in the shop," she says. "I wasn't expecting it to rain."

“You poor thing, you must be frozen,” Martha says. “Here, Toni, give her one of your sweaters or something.”

Immediately, both Toni and Shelby object. “No, that’s okay,” Shelby says, at the same time as Toni says, “I only have one spare—”

Martha shoots Toni a disapproving look. “She’s freezing!” she says.

Toni internally sighs, and she meets Shelby’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes are framed in wet, dark lashes, mascara smeared around her eyes. She looks like something off the cover of a book, or a painting, or something. Some bullshit about a beautiful girl lamenting by a river.

Jesus fuck.

“Fine,” she mutters, and shucks off the sweater she’s currently wearing, passing it back. She’s got a fleece beneath it – years of travelling light have taught her how to layer effectively, something Shelby Goodkind and her thin cotton dresses clearly haven’t learned yet – so she supposes it’s not a huge loss, but something in her twists at the thought of Shelby wearing a piece of her clothing; and more than that, something she just had on herself. She tries not to look as Shelby takes off her own sodden sweater, so light it’s practically paper-thin, and then slides Toni’s sweater on, but she can’t help notice the way the rain has made her dress almost see-through as Shelby cranes her arms upwards so she can see the outline of her bra through the material.

The back of her neck goes hot. Quickly, she quickly looks away.

“Where do you live, Shelby?” Martha says.

The address Shelby gives is from one of the nicer areas of town, to Toni’s complete lack of surprise. It’s on the way to the trailer park so it’s not like it’ll be a huge detour, but she can’t help but be grateful that they’re still far away enough that it’s not explicitly obvious that it was their initial destination. Toni has no doubt Shelby probably has an idea where she lives – Toni’s aware the different scraps of her home life are evident in the fierceness she carries herself with – but it’s a whole different thing to have the resident queen bee watch her go home to a camper van, not when she probably has a whole suite to herself.

It’s a relatively quiet drive. The music still plays softly between them, Martha adorably humming along and doing air-guitar at all the red lights, but otherwise there is silence. Normally Toni would join in but she just curls up in her seat, head against the window, trying to forget that barely a foot behind her is Shelby in her jumper. She just wants to go home and be done with today.

It’s been long enough as it is.

Still, she can’t help the way her eyes travel up to the rear-view mirror to watch Shelby. She’s stiff around the shoulders but she’s relaxed a little in the seat, fingers knotted tight in her lap, the sleeves of Toni’s jumper stretched out over her knuckles. She’s looking out the window, expression contemplative, so different from the bright bubbly Shelby Toni has become accustomed to flitting through the hallways. She wonders where _this_ Shelby exists, quiet and thoughtful and uncomfortable; whether she has a space to exist at all.

The thought makes her sad. She bites her tongue and looks away.

Finally, they pull up to Shelby’s house: a three-storey red-brick with a manicured front yard and a blue front door. Like something out of a storybook. Shelby pauses just before she pushes open the door to leave.

“Thank you,” she says to them softly. “This was really kind of y’all to pick me up.”

“Of course,” Martha says. “See you at school?”

Shelby smiles. “Yeah. See you at school.” Her gaze flicks to Toni briefly, through her lashes, before she ducks her head and steps out of the car, jogging up the driveway to escape the rain.

It’s not until they’re pulling away that Toni remembers she’s still wearing her sweater.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh toni u don't know what u have coming


	4. Chapter 4

“...and now _here_ ” – at this Gretchen gestures ambiguously towards the whole stage – “I’m thinking big turrets, to give the feeling that we have really just teleported to Verona.”

Toni’s throat feels very dry. She doesn’t think she’s ever been so far out of her league. “Are there... turrets in Verona?”

“Unless you think they should be towers?”

“Turrets should be fine.”

Gretchen gives her a winning smile, and Toni tries for one back except she thinks it comes off as more of a grimace. This is certainly not the first time she’s regretted signing up for the play – she’s sort of been existing within a perpetual state of regret ever since Martha first wrote their names down on the sign-up sheet – but it’s the first time it’s really solidified into something explicable, which is mostly that she knows jackshit about set design. At least if she were part of the cast she’d be able to bullshit her way through unscathed, because how hard can it be to memorise some lines?

There is no way in hell she’s going to be able to bullshit this. She doesn’t even know what a turret _is_.

“The thing I’m most excited for are the big set pieces, though,” Gretchen says. “I’ll need to have to double check with the staff on just how much I am allowed to alter the stage, but luckily the one thing I have managed to secure is getting us funding for us to be able to build Juliet’s balcony.” Which is perfect, really, because if there’s one thing Toni’s better at than painting it’s of course _building_. “I of course will leave that to you; they should have all the necessary supplies in the art department, but should you need anything else you just let me know and I can get it to you.”

“A bridge to jump off?” Toni says, and Gretchen laughs like she thinks she’s joking.

“Toni, this is going to be very good. I’m excited to see what you come up with.”

Yeah. Toni, too.

Today’s order of business had initially been just to paint all the stage blocks a “neutral, Veronese tone” (whatever the fuck that means). Toni’s no painter but it hadn’t seemed all that difficult a task, because while she may not be the most artistically inclined, she’s pretty sure she should be able to paint a few cubes a solid colour without incident. She’d brought her music and her headphones, braided her hair back in the way she used to do for basketball games, and was set to sit in the corner of the room getting on with it while Gretchen staged the first few scenes. But apparently that was too much of a tall order, because within minutes of her arrival Gretchen had swanned her way over, glasses perched on the end of her nose and iPad cradled in one arm, instructing Toni to follow her onto the stage and then discussing all her ideas about the set with her, like she’d mistaken Toni with someone who had the capabilities to paint a _sixteenth century Italian cityscape_ along the back wall.

Toni hadn’t realised that signing herself up for _crew_ involved this much work.

She heads back over to her station at the back of the room, feeling changed. Now she’s even overthinking the fucking stage blocks – what colour would complement all _eight_ backdrops Gretchen wants her to paint? She stares at the row of paint tins she’s been supplied with. Is Gretchen expecting a cityscape on them too? If she dropped one hard enough on her head would it kill her? She’s just beginning to consider the merits of it when from behind her someone says, “Do you need some help?”

Toni turns to see Nora, the less crazy half of the battery twins, stood behind her, fingers knotted in front of her. She stands hunched over like she’s expecting Toni to kick her in the stomach, or maybe with Rachel as a sister she’s just anticipating being bellowed at she’s fifty feet away. Toni sits up, regarding her. “Can you paint?”

“I’m okay at it.”

That’s better than nothing. “Sure.”

Nora sits down next to her carefully. Everything about her is long and gangly: she is built a little like a baby deer, with knobbly knees and fingers that are probably good at piano. “I think you should go with tan,” she says, as though she can read Toni’s mind. “It is complimentary of a range of colours and Verona includes lots of Roman infrastructure made of limestone which is a similar colour.”

Toni stares at her. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“When your sister is an athlete you spend a lot of time reading in the stands.”

Huh. Toni hands her a paintbrush. “Well, knock yourself out.”

Nora takes it with a small smile. Together they prise open the paint tin that seems the closest in colour, and start to paint the first of the blocks in companionable silence. Across the room, she hears Martha say, “Hey!” and looks up to see Shelby walk in, her backpack slung over one shoulder. When she sees Martha her face lights up and she reaches her hand out, taking Martha’s own when she gets near enough and pulling her into a hug.

“How was your Geography exam?” she’s saying as Shelby drops her bag by the floor. Shelby groans.

“Oh, God, Marty, let’s not talk about it. He said he wouldn’t put biomes in it and then there was a sixteen-point question about them. When I don’t graduate, remember me.”

“I’ll carry a framed picture of you everywhere I go,” Martha promises as she links their arms together, and Shelby laughs, the sound carrying all the way across the hall.

Toni feels herself scowl, and she looks back down at the block she’s painting. Marty’s _her_ nickname, and she doesn’t know why Shelby feels like she suddenly now gets free reign to use it like she’s anywhere near as close to Marth as Toni is. Toni knows that Martha has all these ideas about the three of them as friends, probably was hoping that after the fifteen silent minutes spent sharing a car (and fourteen in Toni’s jumper) that they’re bonded, but Toni doesn’t think so.

Besides, Shelby hasn’t even given the jumper back. So as well as being a friend thief, she’s also a jumper thief.

Toni sighs irritably and turns back to the block. Thing is: she knows she’s being irrational. Martha can be friends with whoever she wants; she’s not an animal or something to be poached off of Toni’s land. But there’s something about Shelby, pretty perfect Shelby, that just makes Toni’s skin crawl, and she’s not naïve enough to think that it’s jealousy or her being territorial.

Being a foster kid, carted around from home to home, Toni is so fucking self-aware it’s exhausting. She’s knows she’s not the easiest to be around, something always not quite right; carer after carer claiming that they were just looking for something a little different. Something that wasn’t soured by anger and tempers. She’s Martha’s surly angry shadow, her foil, the bitch who smashed up Regan’s car, and in a popularity contest up against someone like Shelby Goodkind, who has it even in her fucking _name_ , she knows she’s going to lose.

It’s not jealousy. It’s self-preservation.

She dips her paint brush into the tin so viciously it slops a little over the side, dripping onto the blue tarp and splashing onto her bare knee. “Fuck,” she mutters, and wipes it away with the sleeve of her jersey. Fuck Shelby, and her ponytail, and perfect school record and singing voice and whole fucking life. _Fuck her._

“Is everything okay?” Nora says.

Toni scrubs harder when the paint doesn’t budge. “Peachy.”

There’s a pause. “You don’t sound like it is.”

“Yeah, well, I’m painting a fucking block, Nora. I’m not sure what you’re expecting.”

When she looks up, Nora is giving her a look that feels a little too knowing.

“What?” she snaps defensively.

“Can I ask something?”

“Not if it’s about Shelby.”

“Why would it be about Shelby?”

Fuck. “No reason. What’s up?”

“I was just wondering why you’re doing set at all. It doesn’t look like you’re enjoying it.”

Toni picks at the flaking paint on her jersey sleeve. “I didn’t exactly sign up willingly.”

“Me either,” Nora says. She must see the surprise on Toni’s face, because she elaborates, “I joined for my sister Rachel? She had to quit diving so our parents thought she needed another creative outlet.”

They both glance over at Rachel, who, as if on cue, stubs her toe on a stray bag and shouts, “Fuck!”

“I don’t think it’s working,” Nora comments.

Toni snorts. “You don’t say.”

“You used to do a sport too, didn’t you?”

Her mood sours further. “Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Kicked off.”

Nora makes a thoughtful sound, and dips her paint brush into the tin. “Don’t tell anyone,” she says, “but that’s something you and Rachel have in common.”

Surprised, Toni glances at her, and then at Rachel onstage, who is now sat writing a note in the margin of her copy of the play, eyebrows furrowed, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth. Toni hadn’t realised she’d even left the diving team at all, let alone been booted out.

Suddenly what was so funny about Rachel’s temper before becomes a little too real. She swallows the lump in her throat and turns back to the box.

*

Toni and Nora have finished three of the blocks by the time Gretchen finally decides to begin the rehearsal. Nora, whose quiet unexpectant company Toni had found herself beginning to enjoy, has to leave her to join Gretchen’s show circle that Toni herself only just manages to get out of, gesturing to the four unpainted blocks with a shrug when Gretchen eyeballs her sat by herself in the corner. When that seems to appease her and she turns to face the rest of the circle, Toni gives herself a mental pat on the back.

Maybe she should have considered acting after all.

Gretchen makes everyone do a series of warm-ups which involve lots of shouting and embarrassing gesticulating that even Martha looks a little reluctant to do (Toni makes a mental note to lord the rather fantastic violin mime she performed over her head for the next year). Then she has them all take hands again and manifest a successful rehearsal – and though Toni’s still feeling a little bitter, she can’t help the amusement that bubbles in the back of her throat when she sees Shelby’s eyes fly open, alarmed, as Gretchen starts to chant, as though she’s just accidentally wandered into an occultist meeting.

“Don’t we all feel relaxed now?” she says afterwards, to dead silence other than Jeanette murmuring, “Absolutely, Gretchen.” “I have always found that a little pre-rehearsal meditation invites good energy into the space to maximise success.”

Fatin, who is stood next to her, rolls her eyes so hard it looks like it hurts.

Oblivious, Gretchen continues. “All right, now that we have expelled the worries of the day, I think we can begin. Today on the agenda I want to try to block and choreograph the masquerade scene – it is one of the biggest scenes, cast-wise, and the sooner we have it down the more time we have to tighten and perfect it.” For the first time, she seems to properly take in the room, because she frowns. “Where’s Dot?”

“I don’t think she’s in today,” Leah says. “She didn’t show up to Trig.”

Gretchen’s face sours like she’s just sucked a lemon. “What?”

“She might be ill,” Shelby offers.

“She’s one of our principal roles.”

Shelby looks a little incensed on Dot’s behalf. “It’s not exactly within her control, Miss Klein.”

“The saying is _the show must go on_ , not _the show must go on unless an actor is ill._ That’s not an excuse. If I knew she wasn’t going to be fully committed I never would have given her the part.” Gretchen exhales sharply, pinching the end of her nose. “Whatever. I will deal with it; she can expect a call home. For today someone will have to step in for her and teach her the blocking before next rehearsal.”

Martha’s hand is in the air before she’s even finished speaking. “I can do it.”

“You’re _in_ the scene, Martha.”

“Only near the end! I can multi-role.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gretchen’s beady eyes scan the room. Toni already begins to get a bad feeling before they’ve even roved over to her in her corner, but when they do and then pause there, her stomach falls to her shoes. “Toni.”

Fatin’s grin becomes almost feral. Cautiously, Toni says, “Gretchen.”

“Can you step in?”

“I’m really busy.”

“You can finish the blocks another time.”

Fuck fuck fuck. “The paint... expires tomorrow.”

“I bought it yesterday.”

“Then you must’ve been scammed.”

“Home Depot doesn’t scam, it’s a reputable company. Come on, get up. Get your script. For today you can be our Romeo.”

Toni’s eyes flick over to Shelby, whose lips have thinned out into an inscrutable line, clutching at her elbows so tightly Toni’s surprised they don’t shatter in her hands. Involuntarily, the image of her in her jumper, blonde hair plastered to her throat and green eyes framed in rain, mascara smudged beneath her lashline, like when put in water the façade of Shelby Goodkind blurred, comes to her mind; the way the car had smelled of peaches even after she had climbed out.

Fuck.

“You lucky _thing_ ,” Martha bemoans as soon as she comes up to her, unaware of Toni’s inner storm. “I wanted my shot.”

“You still have time to convince Gretchen to give you a dance break.”

Martha scowls in Gretchen’s direction. “I already tried. She said that the jingle was not the formal dance of sixteenth century Verona.”

“Did you show her all your medals?”

“Yes! Still nothing.”

“It’s like she doesn’t get that she’s in the presence of jingle royalty.”

Toni feels like she kind of deserves the nudge to the side for that. “Don’t be jealous, it’s not a good look.”

“I’m not jealous.”

Gloomily, Martha says, “I know. I’m just projecting.”

Toni throws an arm around her shoulders. “You’re gonna kick ass as the Nurse. The audience won’t even remember Dot and Shelby.”

Martha smiles up at her. “You think?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“You’ll have to make me proud up there so I can live vicariously through you.”

“I mean, I won’t be doing any proper acting, will I? Just doing the masquerade dance.”

Martha squints at for a few moments, before a wicked-looking smile stretches across her face. “Right, of course,” she says. “That’s what I meant.”

Toni frowns at her, but Martha is skipping off to join the rest of the ensemble in the wings before she can say anything more. She stares after her for a few more moments, before shaking her head. Whatever; she’s probably just messing with her.

“Romeo,” Gretchen calls, “over here, please.”

As it turns out, Gretchen blocking a scene is akin to what Toni can only imagine being in the army is like. She barks orders like a drill sergeant and watches everything with a perpetual expression of distaste on her face, as though everything everyone is doing is somehow morally insulting to her and her line of work. Toni, who feels like she’s existing in a permanent state of whiplash, standing senselessly with her script in one hand, is carted across the stage left right and centre, because apparently Dot chose the fucking worst day to miss. Not that she can really blame her; the only reason she can’t get away with anything similar is because Linn takes every skipped lesson like a personal insult to her parenting.

But still. Of all fucking days, Dot.

The worst thing by far is just the awareness that she’s not meant to be here. Most of the cast onstage are off-book, or at least halfway there, only having to spare the barest glance at their scripts between lines, but Toni stands with her nose between the pages, squinting at all the tricky language and trying not to fuck up the rhythm and timing of the scene, which Fatin is frantically attempting to play along to on her cello, taking every pause to furiously scribble something down in her sheet music. The girl playing Capulet literally _sighs_ every time Toni stumbles over a word, like it’s Toni’s fault she hasn’t memorised the part, and it’s just—

Toni has fucking paint in her fingernails, okay. She knows she’s not meant to be here either.

“Okay, now, Romeo,” Gretchen says, from where she’s stood at the front of the stage. “There will be a momentary reprieve in the dancing, in which you will come down to downstage left – no, _my_ left, Toni, this side – and there will be a big pause in the music when you and Juliet finally come face-to-face – Fatin, make a note of that,” she adds over her shoulder. Fatin stares at her, and then looks down at her sheet music in dismay. Gretchen turns back to Toni. “This is a big moment – one of the biggest of the whole play. You both need to sell it.”

“I’m not actually playing Romeo, though,” Toni says.

Gretchen rolls her eyes. “Don’t be negative. In order for me to fully understand the scene I need you to act as though you are, okay? Make this the most convincing moment of your life.” Toni blinks at her, but she’s already whirled to the other side of the stage. “Now, Juliet, at this moment in the play you have spotted this elusive masked figure across the room and you want to know more. You have broken out of the dance and you are trying to make your way across the ballroom to him. You both will meet at the foot of the stage right here – make a note of that, please – and when you first meet eyes there will be a huge crescendo as the play reaches one of its climaxes.”

Behind her, Fatin’s face becomes despairing, and she rips a page from her sheet music book, throwing it over her shoulder.

Shelby, across the stage, nods. “I understand.”

“You must time this to perfection, the two of you,” Gretchen says, with surprising savagery. Toni does not doubt she is above murder should someone make a mistake during this run-through. “The dance will still be continuing in the background, however the music will be muted” – at this, Fatin throws her pencil across the room – “to highlight the covert, secret nature of this meeting. It would be great, Fatin—” She turns and Fatin, halfway out of her chair to retrieve her pencil, immediately straightens with a pained smile, “—if you could perhaps make this piece of music a leitmotif for Romeo and Juliet’s meetings throughout the play.”

Fatin’s smile becomes a grimace. “Of course.”

“Excellent, thank you,” Gretchen says, and when she turns around Fatin mimes shooting herself in the head. Toni smirks, and to her surprise across the stage she sees Shelby bring her script over her mouth to hide her laugh too. “Once you two have arrived at this moment I just want you to improvise – see what comes naturally to you. We’ll pause before the Nurse makes her entrance, and then I will make any necessary adjustments. Do you both understand?”

Both Shelby and Toni nod, though Toni with some rising apprehension. She thought all they’d be doing was dancing. She’d shown up in her oldest jeans, for fuck’s sake, she’s not exactly prepared to carry one of the _biggest moments of the play_ on her shoulders – let alone _improvise_ it.

Fuck, she doesn’t even know what this scene is meant to be. Is this the death scene?

“Good,” Gretchen says. “From the top.”

Exhaustedly, Fatin starts up at the cello again, and the ensemble start to dance, twirling around each other onstage. Toni’s grip around her script tightens; she feels her palms go clammy. Across the stage, she sees Shelby join in them, hands above her head, eyes searching out; their gazes meet for a split second as Shelby turns, and Toni feels her stomach clench. She looks unfairly nice today, long blond hair pinned back on one side that spins around as she does too. Toni swallows.

The music begins to swell, Fatin’s bow working faster and faster across her cello. Shelby breaks out of the dance, starts tentatively making her way across the stage, which is Toni’s cue to move too; she gradually skirts downstage, trying not to trip or be stepped on by any of the people still dancing around her. As the music climaxes, Toni just manages to reach the foot of the stage in time, nearly tripping headfirst into the orchestra pit in her haste to get there; looks up from her feet to see Shelby much, much closer than she anticipated, their noses inches apart. Only Shelby all of a sudden has transformed right in front of her eyes; she’s not Shelby any longer, she’s something else, something shy and inquisitive, full of wonderment and question. Juliet. Her face void of any ambivalence it held before, just open and breathless, green eyes clear, looking up at Toni through her lashes.

It’s enough to make Toni shift a little, straighten. There’s no fucking way she’s going to get away with mumbling through her lines when Shelby is half a foot away giving it her all. She glances at Gretchen, who makes a keep going gesture, eyes intent, so she coughs and takes a step back, glancing down at her script.

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine,” she reads, “the gentle fine is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.” She imagines her chest filling with anticipation, glimpsing a beautiful girl across a room at a masquerade ball she’s not even meant to be at; something inside her going, _that’s her, get nearer_. She imagines the early days with Regan, when she’d covet every brush of their hands, every smile, hoard them like treasure; imagines now, not knowing if she will ever see this girl again. Needing to catalogue the brush of _their_ hands, _her_ smile, the fall of her hair over her shoulders.

She takes Shelby’s hand. Shelby’s grip tightens around her own.

“Good pilgrim,” she says lightly, “you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this.” There is something so compelling about her, something so mischievous and joyful in her eyes, as she lifts their hands, raises them palm-to-palm. Toni barely registers the paint in her fingernails. “For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.”

“Have not saints’ lips, and holy palmers too?”

Shelby raises her eyebrows, and drops their hands, moves away coyly. “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

Toni catches her hand before she can move too far. “Then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do,” she says, sparing a glance down at her script. “Then pray, grant though, lest faith turn to despair.”

“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.”

“Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is...”

Toni trails off, staring down at her script.

Well. Fuck.

“Purged,” Gretchen stage-whispers.

“My sin is purged,” Toni corrects, her throat feeling a little dry. She looks back up at Shelby who seems to have come to a similar realisation at the same moment because she is staring at her a little wide-eyed, any trace of Juliet gone – just her and the understanding that they’re about to have to _kiss_ onstage.

Confliction crosses her face. Her eyes flick down to Toni’s mouth, and then away, ears going pink, and she quickly steps away. “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”

Toni sees Gretchen frown in her peripheral, so she steps closer, takes Shelby’s hand again. “Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg’d! Give me my sin again.”

Another glimpse at her script tells her that it’s a crisis not-so-successfully averted, as there’s yet another kiss. _Jesus Christ_ , she thinks. Somehow, though, seeing Shelby’s obvious discomfort and surprise has eased Toni, and so when she meets Shelby’s almost panicked gaze she merely raises an eyebrow, goading her. _Go on_ , she wants to say. _I dare you_.

For a split second, it looks like Shelby might actually do it. Her eyes briefly drop down to Toni’s mouth, her throat working as she swallows, and she inclines her head, so slightly Toni doubts it’s visible to anyone except her. But then, before she can, Gretchen shouts, “Cut!”, so suddenly that they both jerk a little in surprise, coming out of their reverie. Shelby clears her throat and abruptly drops her hand, stepping away.

There is a smattering of polite applause as Gretchen approaches the stage, her gaze inscrutable. A breeze from a nearby open window pimples Toni’s arms in gooseflesh and she folds her arms across her chest, suddenly feeling exposed. She pointedly avoids Martha’s gawking gaze from the wings. She can’t believe she nearly kissed Shelby Goodkind in front of everyone. She can’t believe Shelby Goodkind nearly kissed _her_ in front of everyone.

 _Fuck_. What just happened?

“Girls, that was _incredible_ ,” Gretchen says. “Toni, why didn’t you tell me you could act like that?”

Toni coughs, a little embarrassed. “No, that wasn’t... I was just reading the lines.”

She can feel Shelby’s gaze on the side of her face but resists the urge to turn and face her. Her hands go clammy again around the script. She doesn’t know what just happened – it was as though the world before her had completely vanished, like as soon as she took Shelby’s hand she’d been transported into an ancient Italian great hall, spying a beautiful girl across the room for the first time and desperately wanting to know her. Coming back now, standing on a grubby stage in the middle of an auditorium populated mostly by chewing gum and crumbs, surrounded by all her classmates, it’s as though she’s a butterfly, spat skinless from its skein, half-formed and naked. She wants nothing more than to run and hide.

Gretchen’s gaze sharpens thoughtfully, but blessedly she doesn’t press the issue. “Hm,” she says instead, before looking back down at her script and flipping forward a page. “Alright, let’s push on.”

Rehearsal can’t end soon enough, frankly. Toni doesn’t let herself get carried away again; doesn’t let herself do anything, really, other than mumble the lines on cue, keeping her gaze pointedly away from Martha, Gretchen and especially Shelby, whose eyes have turned from conflicted to something almost scrutinising, like she’s trying to strip Toni apart, read all the pieces. She only has a few more lines in the scene until she exits offstage, and after it’s been rehearsed to the death and she can sit to the side for the remaining twenty minutes she pulls up a chair next to Fatin who wordlessly offers her a mint, and then eats four when Toni declines.

From here, anyway, it gives Toni a good enough vantage point of the stage. Martha, who makes her entrance with more pizzazz than the Nurse probably needed, is excellent onstage: she flubs her lines a few times and mixes up downstage and upstage but she’s enthusiastic and always eagerly listens to any adjustments Gretchen gives her. From here Toni also gets an objective view of Shelby, who up close had been bewitching enough to fucking get her involved too. Far away, she’s no less magnetic – she plays Juliet with an innocence but also a possession that makes her difficult to pull her eyes away from.

Toni doesn’t even want to think about what she must’ve looked like next to her. Scrubby feral Toni Shalifoe paling in comparison yet again.

Fucking great.

Finally, Gretchen decides that the scene is passable enough that it won’t give her nightmares – which is unfortunately a direct quote – and releases them for the afternoon. Toni is out of her chair almost immediately, but when she retrieves her bag from the back of the room and glances at her phone her stomach falls when she sees two missed calls and a text from Linn, saying that she’s going to be picking her up from school today.

Toni’s lip curls. She knows that Linn only means the best – and as far as foster carers go she’s certainly could be worse. But this constant surveillance, something that only started after Regan, like she’s afraid should she not know Toni’s location at all times she’ll rob a store or commit murder, drives Toni mad. She texts back _fine_ and then slides down against one of the benches.

Just the cherry on top of an already shitty day.

“Toni!” Martha comes barrelling across the room and whirls Toni into a hug. “What the fuck! You were fucking _amazing_!”

Despite herself, Toni feels a smile tug at her lips, and she squeezes her shoulder when Martha pulls away. “What can I say. Raw talent.”

“Why are you doing set when you can do _that_?”

“Maybe I’m really into set.”

“No you’re not, you hate painting. You should have auditioned _with_ me, dumbass.”

“Didn’t want to show anyone up,” Toni says, and Martha rolls her eyes. “But hey – you were great out there.”

Martha smiles, a little bashfully. “Yeah? You think?”

“Knocked everyone out the water.”

“I think I’m slowly getting to Gretchen. Give me two weeks and I’ll have my jingle solo.”

“I’ll be excited to see it.”

“I’ve actually been rehearsing several variations just in case she has a change of heart,” Martha says, as she slings her backpack over her shoulder. “I’ll show you tomorrow – I need to go, or I’d show you now.”

Toni’s a little disappointed she won’t be able to wait with her, but she still smirks at her anyway. “Hot date?”

“You know it,” Martha says, with an adorable attempt at a wink that ends up being more of an elongated blink. “No, my mom’s taking us out for dinner to celebrate Dad’s promotion. She wanted you to come too but when she called Linn she said you’re busy tonight.”

Toni’s fists clench. “Oh, yeah. I’m helping her with her... closet reorganisation.”

“Ugh, jealous.”

“Bet you wish you weren’t going out to nice meal now.”

“You know it.” She grins at her, and then zips up her jacket. “See you tomorrow?”

Toni nods. “See you, Marty.”

That’s just so fucking like Linn, Toni thinks irritably, as she watches Martha walk away. By now most of the cast have left, leaving only a few stragglers trying to hunt down scarves or find missing keys, calling softly across the empty auditorium if anyone can see them anywhere. Toni slouches against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. Linn’s still punishing her for what happened – which, yeah, Toni fucking gets, okay, she knows that she did was bad – but it’s like Linn doesn’t understand that at this point Martha and her family are one of Toni’s only lifelines. She’s probably mad that Toni’s spent more time in Martha’s bedroom than her own over the last month; probably why she wanted to pick her up at all, to get her in a closed environment where she could lecture her for twenty minutes and Toni couldn’t escape.

But _fuck_. This just feels cruel.

She glances at her phone – twenty minutes late now, great – and decides that she may as well just wait outside; sitting in a draughty auditorium by herself is only making her more depressed. She pushes herself to her feet and is just zipping her phone away when from behind her she hears, “Toni?”

She turns.

It’s Shelby, holding a plastic shopping bag. “Hey,” she says. “I just wanted to give you your jumper back. Yesterday I must’ve walked off with it which I’m really sorry about.” She must misinterpret the surprise on Toni’s face because she hurriedly adds, “I washed it, don’t worry. It just got wet yesterday and I didn’t want to return it to you damp.”

“Oh.” Toni knows the surprise must be evident in her voice, because Shelby’s smile becomes a little sheepish as she offers the shopping bag to her. Toni takes it, peers inside; sure enough, it’s her jersey, laundered and folded, probably better-cleaned than it’s been in the entire time it’s existed in her possession. She almost wants to reach in and stroke it, because she knows that Shelby would be the kind to use fabric softener, something Linn has always regarded as a frivolity, but she refrains, instead tightening her grip against the plastic handles. “Uh, thanks.”

Shelby smiles at her. Toni is half-tempted to add something snide, mention how in any other context sharing clothes like this would be pretty gay, just to get her to squirm – make her look the way she did when Toni confronted her the first time, _so it has nothing to do with Dot playing Romeo?_ But then she looks at Shelby’s friendly, almost nervous face, recognises how hard she’s trying to be nice when Toni’s been nothing other than pretty fucking mean, and so:

She doesn’t.

Instead, she nods at her, turns to lift her bag onto her shoulder, but she’s aware of Shelby staying where she is, like there’s something else she wants to say. Hears her begin, “Hey, Toni—” and half-turns back to face her.

But just as she does, the doors of the auditorium open – and in walks Regan.

Toni feels herself go cold. Regan is looking around as she enters, joined with another girl also carrying a clarinet case – someone from orchestra with her, no doubt – when her eyes almost immediately fall on Toni she pauses, leg freezing in a half-aborted motion to take another step. In her peripheral, Toni is distantly aware of Shelby’s face creasing in confusion, glancing between the two of them, but it registers like something from a different room over.

Fuck. Fucking _fuck_.

Still, it’s too late to pretend she hasn’t seen her, and so she bites down on the inside of her cheek so hard she feels it split between her teeth as Regan and her friend cautiously make their way over. Regan’s smile is careful and tentative; her friend clearly holds no similar reservations, as her expression is outright hostile, her stance wary, like she’s afraid if she gets too close Toni’ll whip a knife out her ass and shank her.

It’s enough to make Toni want to do just that. But she doesn’t.

“Toni,” Regan says, finally, once they’re near enough. The two of them pause, a safe distance away. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Toni says.

The girl glares at her.

“Sorry, I... didn’t know you’d be here,” Regan says.

“It’s fine.” Toni’s mouth feels desert-dry. She licks her lips. “Did you need something?”

Regan sort of jerks, like she’d forgotten she’d come here for a reason. Toni feels something numb inside her twinge. “Oh, yes, um— we were looking for Fatin? We were meant to meet with her to work on orchestra for the play.”

Toni feels her heart fall to her shoes. “You’re... doing the music for the play?”

Fuck fuck fuck _fuck_.

“Yeah,” Regan says, and hefts her clarinet case belatedly, like she’d forgotten she was holding it. “We’re just... helping out.”

An awkward silence descends. Toni feels her mouth fill with iron. For the first time, she prays for her phone to ring with Linn’s number, give her at least one way out that doesn’t involve sinking through the floor.

She’s aware of Shelby next to her glancing between the two of them, as though she’s trying to suss out what’s going on, and for a moment Toni just feels red-hot with shame – that perfect good-girl Shelby is seeing her at her most vulnerable and uncomfortable, face-to-face with the scar that still hasn’t quite yet healed. She doesn’t know if Shelby knows; would hardly be surprised. It’s not like the news didn’t spread. She’s probably putting the pieces together now: oh, so _this_ is the girl. Toni closes her eyes, waits for her to say something.

But, to her surprise, Shelby doesn’t say anything about it all. Instead, after the silence has stretched on just a little long, Shelby switches on, smile wide and beaming. “Hey, y’all, it’s great to see you,” she says, and when Toni opens her eyes she’s shaking both of their hands. “I think Fatin just left, but I can text her for you if you want?”

Regan’s gaze flickers between Shelby and Toni, but Shelby’s smile doesn’t falter. “That’s okay,” she says finally. “But thanks.”

“Great,” Shelby says brightly, and then turns to Toni. “Toni, weren’t you walking me out?”

Toni, honestly, has no fucking idea what’s going on, but all she does know is that she thinks Shelby Goodkind just saved her ass, and she’s not about to look that godly gift horse in the mouth. “Uh, yeah,” she says, and then spares a close-lipped smile at Regan. “Uh, see you around.”

“See you,” Regan says, voice small.

Toni forces herself to peel her eyes away and lets Shelby drag her out, belatedly remembering to throw her backpack over her shoulder as she does. Shelby’s grip around her arm doesn’t falter until they’ve left the school building and are standing by the edge of the car park, the sky above them grey and pregnant with rain.

“Sorry about that,” Shelby says. “You just looked like you needed an out.”

Toni’s a little surprised she’d be willing to do that for her. “Uh, yeah.”

There’s a small pause, and then Shelby gently bumps their shoulders together. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh. Sorry. Thanks.”

Shelby’s smile is teasing. “I was kidding, Toni.”

Toni isn’t sure how to interpret that, so she doesn’t respond, just stands gripping the straps of her backpack as Shelby digs around in her own bag for her phone. As she does, her head bent, long blond hair casting a curtain over the side of her face and hazing the watery sunlight that passes through in gold, Toni’s curiosity wins.

“You’re not gonna ask?”

Shelby looks up. “Do you... want me too?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.” She pauses, her hand still buried in her bag, face hesitant. “She... was your girlfriend, right?”

Fucking fantastic. So she does know. “Yeah. I guess you know the rest.”

“I tried to stay out of it,” Shelby says. Toni glances at her. “ _A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret_. Proverbs.”

“Like the fortune cookie?”

“Proverbs like the Bible book.” Shelby pulls out her phone, squints at it; adds, distractedly, “It wasn’t my business. So I didn’t pay attention.” She finally looks up from at it at Toni, and shoots her a small smile. “I’ll see you around?”

Toni just has to fucking blink. What the _fuck_? “Uh, yeah.”

She watches her walk away, stunned. Even Martha, her _best friend_ , hadn’t been immune to the stories that had spread across the school like wildfire; called her the day after, when Toni hadn’t shown up to school, demanding to know what the hell happened and why people were saying that she and Regan had broken up. To know that Righteous Shelby, who wears fucking ribbons in her hair and talks like she’s just emerged from a racist shampoo commercial, ignored them all because it wasn’t her business feels far bigger than it has any right to be. For weeks, Toni had been like an animal in a cage, watched from every corner of the hallway as she moved through it. The fact she was also notably no longer in the basketball line-up was something absolutely no one missed, either.

It feels almost disarming, to know that Shelby hasn’t yet been privy to the ugliest side of her. To know that she had enough respect for her even though she didn’t even know her other than the ferocious best friend of Martha to not listen to any of the rumours.

It’s the most kindness she’s been shown in a long time.

She glances down wordlessly at the plastic bag in her hand. This time, she doesn’t tamp down the urge to resist reaching in and feeling it; the fabric feels soft against her fingers, still a little warm, like it was taken straight out of a tumble-dryer and then folded into Shelby’s bag. She curls her fingers into it, pulls it up against her face. Involuntary, she inhales; smells something sweet, like peaches.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so it beginnnnsss


	5. Chapter 5

It was only a matter of time.

It had been like just any other morning: she and Martha had met at the gate, Toni’s knuckles blushed bright pink from the cold morning air as she cycled in, and then, arms linked, had come into school. In her peripheral she had seen a few flyers pinned to various lockers throughout the hallway, but she hadn’t thought too much of them, only that the amount of looks that had followed her as she walked hadn’t been this high since the accident.

And then she reached her own locker.

Toni stares at it now, jaw clenched. Taped to the front of it is a scanned copy of the local paper, dated from a month ago, and entitled _local high school student charged with the destruction of property over car vandalism_.

So they weren’t fucking flyers after all. All she can think is that she’s surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

Distantly, she’s aware of Martha letting out a, “ _Shit_ , Toni” next to her as she finally takes it in, but it’s barely audible over the blood roaring in her head. She stares at it, pulse like a bass drum somewhere in her ears, so fucking angry she can feel herself tremble all over.

It must’ve been one of Regan’s orchestra friends – probably the bitch from yesterday afternoon, who had looked at her like she was contagious. But it just as easily could’ve been someone else: anyone else, really, who knew all about the woes of Regan and her psycho ex and thought that this would be a good method of revenge, just when it was beginning to fade from the general school conscious. Toni had borne the brunt of the looks because she knew it would all blow over soon enough, when someone else inevitably did something stupid a few weeks later and their focus shifted onto that: but how the fuck is she meant to move on if every time she comes to the brink someone brings it up again?

Fuck. Her fingernails cut into her palms with how tightly her fists are clenched. It takes everything in her not to punch the fucking locker, if only because it would be giving everyone exactly what they want.

“Toni,” she hears, again, and comes out of her own head, red tint fading from her vision. “Toni,” again, and she looks over, sees Martha clutching her arm, a grim look on her face. “Don’t give them a reaction. You’ll just make it worse.”

Toni takes a deep breath. _Fuck_. It rattles in her ribs.

“Miss first period,” Martha says. “Go to the library or something, cool off. Okay? I got you.”

Toni shoots her a tight-lipped, grateful look. Sometimes she really doesn’t fucking deserve Martha and her kindness. Martha squeezes her arm and then rips down the article, crumpling it as tight as she can, and then heads off in the opposite direction, the crowd of students huddled around parting like the red sea to let her through.

Even though it’s no longer there, Toni can still feel it taunting her. That article had been one of the breaking points – Linn had called the news station and demanded they pull it down, played the foster kid guilt trip card when they tried to argue against her. (The one time she’d been even _slightly_ helpful.) It’s cruel, is what it is: a reminder that no matter what, this is a mistake that will haunt her for as long as she’s in high school. That there will always be a trail of breadcrumbs right back to her ugliest part, blown up and scanned a dozen times all over the school.

Roughly, Toni hefts her backpack higher on her shoulder, keeps her eyes down, and hurries down the hallway, trying to avoid eye contact. The only place that she can think that would be empty so early is the auditorium, so she quickens her pace as she moves in its general direction. As she approaches the doors, propped open with a chair, she sees a WARNING: PAINT IN PROGRESS, DO NOT SHUT sign taped over one of the windows like an eyepatch. She almost kicks the chair before she sees the door is, accordingly, missing its handle, and decides that the one thing that would make this morning more fucking hellish is getting locked in the auditorium, which is almost eerie when it is not filled with dozens of people. Instead, she sidles past and stomps her way across the room.

Everything is left as it was last night: the blue tarp in the corner with the half-finished pile of stage blocks, the tin of paint next to them. The spot on the stage she and Shelby nearly kissed feels like it glows red-hot, and Toni all of a sudden is overcome with such anger that she turns and has to punch the wall.

“ _Fuck,_ ” she yells, from both frustration and the pain, but it feels good, especially the way the empty echoing call shouts it back at her. The wall isn’t even dented, but her fist stings bright and sharp, her knuckles red, and she cradles her hand against her chest, feeling the trembles of anger begin to subside. God, it’s barely nine and the day has already reached an all-time low. She knows she shouldn’t skip class, that Linn’ll greet her this afternoon with a stern face and a lecture about how she’s beginning to get sick of all these phone calls she’s receiving from the school but honestly, Toni can’t find it in herself to give a flying fuck.

In fact, all she kind of wants to do now is just paint a fucking cube.

She drops her backpack to the floor by the stage blocks, and then joins it shortly thereafter, pulling her headphones out of her bag and plugging them into her ears. The paint brush is lying prone on top of one of the blocks, half-stuck with dried paint; Toni prises it off, picks the bristles apart from where they’ve clumped together, and starts to paint.

Something about the repetitious, mechanical movements of the brush, up and down, is like a balm on her smouldering mood. Her thoughts don’t even have the capacity to run amok and make her feel even worse because she’s playing her music so loudly that it doesn’t let them. She doesn’t know how long she sits there painting; is only half-aware of the warning bell going off somewhere behind her music as first period starts. She finishes one block and moves onto the next, the penultimate one, slows her movements to lengthen the process because after this she’s got to start the backdrops and like _fuck_ is she ready for that.

Only a few minutes into the second block, she becomes aware of someone else coming into the auditorium, the room momentarily darkening as someone stands silhouetted in the doorway. She tries to ignore it, hoping if she looks like she’s meant to be here she won’t get in trouble, until behind the music she hears her own name.

She pulls a headphone out of one ear and glances up, expecting to see an unimpressed-looking teacher about to tell her off, or maybe even Gretchen, come to deliver another fantastical unattainable idea about set design.

But it’s not.

Instead, none other than fucking Shelby stands in the doorway, looking just as surprised to see her. “Toni?”

Toni’s mood sours even further. Perfect. Just perfect. “Hey,” she mutters in response, turning back to the block. She hopes Shelby will get the hint and leave her alone – the last thing she wants right now is company, especially when the company in question has a ponytail and a disarming smile.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t. In her peripheral Toni sees her hover in the doorway, toying at one of the straps of her bag. “What are you doing here?” she says, finally.

“Practicing my stand-up routine.”

“Don’t you have class?”

“Yep.”

Shelby doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, so she just nods and creeps further into the room, quietly closing the door behind her. Toni puts her earphone back in but doesn’t switch her music back on, so consciously aware of Shelby’s presence it’s as though she’s a live bomb. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her start to move through the aisles, checking under the chairs for something.

Because Toni’s always been glutton for punishment, she can’t help herself. “Don’t _you_ have class?”

“I know, the first bell went five minutes ago,” Shelby says. She sounds sort of stressed about it; were it any other situation Toni would have found sort of adorable. “I just left my pencil case here last night and I need to try find it.”

Toni _mm_ s disinterestedly, dipping the paint brush in the tin. Shelby continues to hunt up and down the aisles, checking underneath every seat, and looking more and more panicked as the minutes tick by, continuously checking her phone for the time. Finally, she seems to spy it lurking in the third row, and emerges with a triumphant sound, balancing it on one of the seats and unzipping it to check it still has everything in it. Toni tries not to pay attention but Shelby’s presence is so intrusive in the otherwise still, silent room that she can’t help but be keyed into her and everything she’s doing, so much that she accidentally runs the paint brush off the end of the cube and onto her pant leg. She lets out a curse and picks at the paint mark with the edge of her fingernail; she can already see Linn’s displeased look at the sight of it, yet another to be added the list of things she’s ruined.

Evidently no one crept in during the night and stole any of her pens, because, satisfied, Shelby zips her pencil case back up and puts it in her backpack, and then heads towards the doors; though not after a half-aborted turn Toni’s way, almost as though she was about to say goodbye. Toni tries to keep her mind from leaping to conclusions, instead dips the paint brush probably too violently in the paint, but it’s all rendered useless when she hears a whispered, “Fuck.”

She glances up, surprised, and glances at Shelby, stood by the double doors. She’s never heard Shelby curse before.

“Where’s the door handle?” Shelby says.

Oh shit. Now Toni’s beginning to share the sentiment. “They removed it to paint the door.”

“No, no, no,” Shelby says, and tugs at the doors. They don’t move. “Shit!”

“Didn’t you see the sign?”

“What sign?”

“The one on the door? _Don’t close the door_?”

Shelby’s whispered, “fuck,” answers that question. Toni rolls her eyes and turns back to the block.

“Well, now we’re locked in. Good fucking job.”

“I’ll text Andrew,” Shelby says determinedly, though her voice is beginning to waver a little in panic. “He’ll get a teacher to get us out.”

“Wouldn’t count on that.”

She can almost feel Shelby’s gaze on the side of her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He has World History, right?” Shelby nods. “Yeah. Martha too. They’ve got an exam.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Shelby says, and then tugs at the doors again, like that’ll do anything. “I’m gonna miss first period. This is gonna screw up my attendance.”

“I think you’ll live.”

Shelby doesn’t respond, just pulls at the doors one last time; they stay shut. Toni turns back to the block, already feeling the edge of a migraine push at her skull. Fuck. Being locked in sucks ass enough in itself, but locked in with _Shelby_? All she had wanted was a place for her to be by herself and listen to her angry rage playlist, but apparently that was too much of a tall fucking order.

Peace and quiet is the last thing she’s gonna get now.

She counts to ten in her head before she hears Shelby’s tentative footsteps towards her. Like fucking clockwork. She flicks her eyes to the side and sees her shoes toeing the edge of the tarp; she’s wearing sandals today, expensive-looking ones that show off her painted toenails. The tarp rustles as she sits down.

“I didn’t invite you for a chat,” Toni says.

Shelby sounds a little hurt. “I’m just trying to be civil.”

“Yeah, well. Be civil far away.” She sees Shelby open her mouth to retort, and looks up for the first time, fixing her with a dead look. “Seriously, Goodkind. I’m really not in the mood.”

Shelby’s expression eases a little; turns from hurt to something almost like sympathy. “Is this... about the article on the lockers?”

Toni goes cold, and wrenches her gaze away. Perfect. “So you saw them.”

“There were a few. I took down all the ones I could see.” Shelby hesitates. “Who... who did it?”

Toni sighs, and dips the paintbrush back into the can. “I don’t know. One of Regan’s friends, probably. Defending her honour, or some shit.”

Shelby looks offended at this. “Besmirching someone’s character doesn’t defend anything.”

Toni snorts. “Tell that to them.”

There is an uncharacteristic pause. Toni looks up and sees Shelby’s mouth opening and closing, like she’s trying to figure out the politest way to phrase whatever she’s about to say. Toni gets fed up after three seconds of this.

“ _What_?”

“Is that what you were talking about?” Shelby says, all in a rush. “What happened yesterday? Between you and... Regan?”

A beat, and then Toni nods. “Yeah.”

She wants to ask – Toni can see it on her face. She never would, though, always too fucking polite for it, but Toni feels like it’s the least she deserves. She sighs. “We broke up. I broke her window. The end.”

Shelby blinks at her. “The end?”

“Well, then the school kicked me off the basketball team, because it happened on school property. But yeah. The end.”

Shelby looks floored, like she’s not sure what detail to focus on. Understandable: even to Toni it all feels like a blur. Finally, she settles on, “You just... broke her window?”

Toni’s mouth twists. Truthfully, there was nothing _just_ about it. It’s so easy to look at it as an abstraction, a crime scene to be objectively taken apart – something about _young love_ and _tumultuous teen mood swings_. She guesses it would be a fair assessment. That’s what everyone thinks, and she’s content to keep it that way: because what’s the alternative? Letting people in on the bad moods, the dark moods, the moods where sometimes breaking things is the only way she feels she can express her anger? They’ve hesitated calling it anger management because kids with anger management are the last ones to get fostered, something about letting a sparking match into a wooden barn, but Toni knows it’s what they all think. Hell, she does too. Her temper dangles on the edge of a cliff, and she’s gotten good at suppressing it, but the dark moods are inevitable, and she had the broken mirror in her room to remind her every time she sat in front of it to braid her hair for game day. _Don’t fuck this up_ , she’d tell her fragmented reflection, and then she did. Worst of all by far was how three days later Regan had driven into school with a new windshield like nothing had ever happened. Toni wonders if she still finds broken glass in the boot. She does, sometimes, in the bag she used to break it. Cut her finger on a piece the other day. For a metaphor, it was pretty fucking on the nose.

But she’s not about to tell Shelby Goodkind that – Shelby Goodkind who probably has never known a bad mood in her life.

So she just shortly responds, “Yep,” and dips the paint brush back into the tin.

Unfortunately, Shelby seems to be pretty fucking shit at picking up cues, because instead of getting that Toni’s done with the conversation, done with _her_ , she shifts and clears her throat uncomfortably, as though she can sense her hostility. “Hey, look,” she broaches, “I know we didn’t get off to the best start—”

For fuck’s sake. “Shelby, I’m really not in the mood for a _bonding_ _session_.”

Shelby scowls at her, which surprises Toni a little. “I just wanted to say that I’m _sorry_ ,” she says, which Toni would probably believe if she didn’t sound like she was in a snit. “For—whatever I did to you that made you hate me.”

“Seriously?”

“What?”

“Made _me_ hate _you_? Are you kidding me?”

“I...”

“How about the fact that you’re a fucking _homophobe_ , Shelby? I don’t really think it’s an issue of me hating you. Frankly, I don’t care enough about you to hate you.”

“I don’t think you’re... wrong for being gay.”

Toni rolls her eyes. “I’d rehearse that a few more times if I were you.”

“I’m being serious, Toni. God says that we shouldn’t judge.”

“Yeah, except you realise tolerating me is just as bad, right?”

“I don’t tolerate you because you’re gay, I tolerate you because you’re _rude_ ,” Shelby snaps, and Toni’s hand stills. Aside from the moment in the car, it’s the most real Toni’s ever seen her; the most texture plastic Shelby Goodkind has ever had. “Look, I try and be nice to you because you’re Martha’s best friend, but it gets difficult when you insist on fighting with me about everything, and I just—I don’t know what I did wrong.”

Sullenly, Toni juts her lip. Okay. Point to Christian girl. Maybe the prejudice worked both ways. Still, she refuses to go down without a fight. “Excuse me for thinking that someone who was obviously super uncomfortable with playing opposite a girl hated gay people.”

“God says that we should love everyone. And that’s a rule I try and follow, no matter how hard you make it.”

Toni can’t help it. “Because I’m gay?”

Shelby huffs like she suspects she’s being obstinate on purpose. “Because you’re _rude_.”

Toni regards her. Shelby holds her gaze, eyes narrowed in challenge. Toni’s never seen her like this before – and as much as she’s loathe to admit it, she likes it. She suspects maybe this was what she was angling for deep down all along: a reaction, something, _anything_ to make the plastic hollow shell of her designer clothes and perfect blonde hair even a little more substantial.

Besides. It’s the first time that she’s been identified as something other than _the gay one_ or the _window-smasher_.

She sighs, and finally breaks eye contact, looking down at her pant leg and sucking her lower lip into her mouth consideringly. “I guess I’m sorry too, then,” she admits finally, a little reluctantly. “For—being rude. And what I said the other day about— about you pretending God is real. I mean—” She clears her throat, and picks at the paint spot. “I don’t believe he is, but I know you do, and—I’m sorry. For that. It was a shit thing to say.”

“Yeah, it was,” Shelby says, but there’s a small, wry smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “Thank you. Apology accepted. And... I’m sorry, too.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Making you uncomfortable.” Toni raises an eyebrow, and Shelby’s ears go pink. “I know that I... freaked out, that first rehearsal. I’m... trying to get better.”

“I’m not going to be your exposure therapy patient.”

“If I was going to have one it certainly wouldn’t be you,” Shelby says, a little hotly, and it’s enough for Toni to genuinely crack a half-smile. “But it’s not that. I just... I’m just sorry. That I made you feel that way.”

Her green eyes are pleading and earnest; and despite it all, Toni believes her. She’s got nothing to gain from lying, anyway, and if Martha likes her – Martha, Toni’s biggest ally since she first came out to her all those years ago – then she can’t truly harbour hate in her heart. Martha would always say that hate always has a way of seeping out regardless, which Toni had initially dismissed as some Pinterest bullshit, except over the years she’s gotten a little too familiar with hate and what it looks like.

And whatever complicated thing exists on Shelby’s face and in her earnest green gaze, it’s not it.

She twists her mouth and nods a little in acknowledgement. “Apology accepted,” she says. Shelby’s answering relieved smile does something treacherous to her stomach, and she quickly glances away, feeling the back of her neck prickle hot. She picks the paint brush and dips it back in the can, but in her peripheral she’s still aware of Shelby sat there watching her, her eyes boring into the side of her head like lasers.

She lasts about two seconds. “Okay, what?”

“What what?”

“Why are you just watching me?”

“I didn’t realise the conversation was over.”

“Well, it is.”

Toni fears that she may have extended too much of an olive branch, because instead of flinching back or looking hurt like she would’ve done before, Shelby keeps fucking smiling, and Toni does _not_ need to spend any more time thinking about how ruinous her smile is. “But we’re just beginning to get along.”

Oh God, she’s unleashed a monster. “Just... fuck off. I’m still in a bad mood.”

“You know what always helps me when I’m in a bad mood?”

“You have bad moods?”

“A song.”

“We’re not fucking singing _Kumbaya_. Over my dead body.”

“You don’t like Kumbaya?”

“No. Does anyone?”

“It’s a beautiful song.”

“Of course you think that.” Shelby is still giving her a look, and she rolls her eyes. “If you really want to make yourself useful you can help me with these blocks.”

Shelby sighs a little. “No, it’s okay. I should probably rehearse my lines, anyway.”

Toni raises her eyebrows when Shelby turns away from her to dig through her bag and can’t see her. “Jesus, sorry for offering.”

Toni can’t see her face but she’s distinctly sure that Shelby just rolled her eyes.

Turning back to the block, which is nearly finished with its first layer, Toni dips her paintbrush back in the tin for the second coat. Shelby emerges from her bag with her script in hand, and then quickly shuffles over when Toni turns the block onto its side so she can paint the bottom. Like this, their knees are but a hair apart, and Toni feels the empty space between them burn red-hot.

She pointedly does not look.

Next to her, Shelby starts to murmur her lines, a crease forming in her forehead as she tries to remember them. Toni finds herself tuning into them, falling into the lull and rhythm of Shelby’s voice as she speaks; she’s always told herself that she found Shelby’s voice a little annoying, the Southern drawl reminding her too much of the cooking channel Linn permanently keeps the TV playing – Toni’s half-convinced it’s the only channel she has – but like this, just the two of them, she can admit that it’s a little soothing, like one of the wholesome ladies on the channel have stepped out of their magazine-ready kitchen to do a Shakespeare reading.

She also finds herself thinking along to many of the lines as Shelby speaks. Apparent all the times Martha played _Romeo + Juliet_ during their sleepovers left Toni with lasting damage, too, because she finds she knows most of the words without even having to glance down at Shelby’s script.

“ _What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so_...” Shelby trails off, and then snaps her fingers. “ _Would smell as sweet, so... so..._ ”

“So Romeo would,” Toni mutters distractedly, trying to get one of the corners covered. Cheeky fucker; it’s like its sole purpose on Earth is to spite her and just not let paint be applied to it. It’s only when Shelby falls silent that she glances up to see her staring at her. “Or is it something else?”

“No, you’re right,” Shelby says. “You... you really know this play, don’t you?”

Toni feels weirdly exposed. “I mean, it’s an easy scene.”

“No, but even in the rehearsal yesterday. You barely needed your script.”

“Photographic memory.”

“Mm.” Shelby clearly doesn’t believe her, but she doesn’t press it. She instead puts the script face-down on the ground and rests her chin on her knee. “You were really good, by the way. Yesterday, I mean.”

Toni feels a little uncomfortable with so much praise. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t know you could act like that.”

“Man of many hats, me.”

“Why didn’t you audition?”

Toni sighs. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to.”

Dubiously, Shelby raises an eyebrow. “But you... wanted to do set?”

“What are you implying about my set?”

“Nothing! Nothing, just...” Shelby trails off, and she straightens. Her eyes glitter. “I mean to say, your take is very... unique.”

Toni narrows her eyes. “That’s not as nice as you think it is.”

“It’s just a shame,” Shelby says. “That you’re not acting.”

Toni snorts. “Yeah, how will the world cope. At least I can offer them these.” She nudges one of the blocks with her knee, briefly forgetting the paint is still wet. “Oh, fuck, come on.”

“You’re clearly a pro,” Shelby says, amused.

“I don’t need you taking joy out of this,” Toni mutters, sucking at her thumb and scrubbing at her knee. It comes off easily enough but now there’s a smudge in the paint that means she’ll have to do another coat. “Fuck.”

“Well, if you’re finished, you can help me practice my lines?”

Toni scowls at Shelby. Shelby just smiles winningly at her.

“No,” Toni says.

“Oh, come on! It’ll be fun.”

“Do you know what fun is?”

“Sure I do.” When Toni doesn’t budge, Shelby nudges her with her knee. “Just this scene, and then I’ll leave you alone. We’ve got forty minutes to kill, the least you can do is entertain me for a little bit.”

Toni eyes Shelby for a few moments, before heaving a long-suffering sigh. The sacrifices she makes. “Ugh, fine. Give me your script.”

Shelby grins at her, and as Toni accepts the script, she begins to develop the distinct feeling that she’s just been conned. She narrows her eyes at her but Shelby busies herself with straightening her top, some candy-pink frilly thing that would probably be useless against the cold. “Okay, I’m ready,” she says, like Toni was waiting, and closes her eyes. “Hit me.”

Toni sighs, and props her chin in her hands. “ _But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east..._ Christ, he talks for a long time. Et cetera, et cetera... _o, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek_.”

“Ay me,” Shelby recites. Toni eyes her but continues.

“ _She speaks!_ Jesus, okay, more monologuing. ... _When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air._ ”

“ _Oh Romeo, oh Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet_.”

Toni has to say something now. “Okay, stop.”

Shelby cracks open an eye. “What? Did I get it wrong?”

“You sound like you’re reading an instruction manual.”

“You do too.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not actually the one acting, am I? Go again.”

“It’s hard when you’re giving me nothing,” Shelby bitches, but she dutifully closes her eyes again. “ _O Romeo, oh Romeo! Wherefore art though Romeo? Deny thy father_ —”

“Jesus,” Toni remarks, and Shelby opens her eyes.

“What _now_?”

“That was you trying?”

Shelby looks a little wounded. “It’s awkward when you’re not trying either! It’s easier when your scene partner is receptive.” Then she gives her a significant look.

“No, I’m not acting,” Toni says, and Shelby deflates a little. “Come on, isn’t this what you’re meant to be good at? Look, just—close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Jesus, I’m not going to kill you. Just close them.”

Shelby’s eyes narrow, but, after a moment’s pause, she does. “Promise you won’t do anything?”

Toni rolls her eyes where she knows she can’t see. “Yes, I promise. Closed?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Toni sighs, and tucks her fingers under the grubby sole of her sneaker. “Imagine... imagine Andrew, okay? Imagine you’re standing on your balcony that’s probably filled with fuckin’—I don’t know, crucifixes, whatever you have lying around, and Andrew’s standing in the garden beneath you. Can you see him?”

Shelby’s voice comes out a little uncertain. “Yes.”

Toni raises her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” More confident now. Toni nods.

“Good. Keep that in mind, okay? Imagine I’m Andrew. Are you imagining it?”

“Stop asking me things, you’re interrupting.”

“Jesus, sorry. _O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head as is a winged messenger of heaven unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air_.”

“ _Oh Romeo, oh Romeo, wherefore art though Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or though wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet_.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Toni says. “That was somehow even worse.”

Shelby looks a little sheepish when she opens her eyes. “Sorry.”

“I thought that imagining the love of your life would make you less shit, not more.”

“Let me try again,” Shelby says. “Performance anxiety. I imagined him in a billowy, open shirt and panicked.”

Toni can’t help the snort. “Yeah, maybe scrap that.”

“Go again. I’ll make this one better.”

“The bar is _so_ fucking low, Goodkind.”

Shelby kicks at her a little with one of her sandals. “Come on. Be professional. I’ll make this one great.”

“Okay, okay.” Toni raises her hands in surrender, and only lets the smile escape her when Shelby’s eyes are closed. “Are you good? Is Andrew there?”

“Shh. Go on.”

“Kinda counter-productive there.” Toni deserves the kick this time. “Okay. I’m not reading this waffle again. _When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air._ ”

Shelby takes a deep breath. When she next speaks, her voice is tinged in melancholy and longing, her expression yearning. “ _Oh Romeo, oh Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet_.”

 _That’s_ it. Toni suppresses the grin and keeps reading. “ _Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this_?”

“ _Tis but thy name that is my enemy; thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for that name which is no part of thee take all myself_.”

She opens her eyes. Her expression is jubilant.

“Oh my God,” she says. “That’s the first time I’ve ever managed to get that monologue without messing up.”

Toni feels unbearably smug. “See, look what you can achieve when you’re not picturing Andrew in a billowy shirt.”

She doesn’t miss how, for a split second, Shelby’s expression falters. It’s only brief, her face smoothing over in excitement so quickly after that she’s not sure if she made it up, but it sits with her uncomfortably, even when Shelby takes the script back, their hands brushing. “Has the bar been raised yet?” she says, teasing. “Or do I have to do it again?”

Toni pretends to think. “Mm, no, still on the floor. Do it one more time, make sure it’s not fluke. But I’m not fucking doing Romeo’s lead-in again; that son of bitch talks such shit I’m getting a toothache even thinking about him.”

Shelby grins at her, but she straightens, setting her shoulders back and closing her eyes, her lips still curled up in a smile. This sort of happiness is a good look on her; genuine, almost, something eased and grounded about the way she looks sat on a blue tarp on the floor of a big empty room.

“Andrew situated?” Toni says.

Shelby cracks an eye open at her, unimpressed, but before she can say anything more there’s an echoey thump, and they both look over at the same time to see the doors of the auditorium creak open. In their wake stands none other than Andrew himself, looking even more douchey than Toni remembered him to be. Fuck, did his hair always have that much gel in it?

“Andrew?” Shelby says, surprised.

“Hey,” he says. “I got your text.”

He glances over at Toni, as if seeing her for the first time, and his expression becomes one of distaste. Toni feels the smile slip off her face.

“Oh.” Shelby glances at Toni too, and then back at him. “I—I thought you had an exam?”

“I did, but when I saw your message Mr Harvey let me come get you.” He kicks the chair back into place, propping the door open, and holds out his hand, expectant. “Come on. What were you meant to have now? American Lit? If you explain what happened I’m sure they’ll be understanding.”

Shelby glances back at Toni. Her expression is inscrutable. For a mad moment, Toni almost wants to ask her to stay, but as quickly as the thought crosses her mind she beats it down. What the fuck? “Are you going to stay here?” Shelby asks her lowly, so he can’t hear.

“Yeah.” Toni gestures towards the blocks. “Still need to—finish them.”

“Oh.” Shelby nods, once, twice, and then stands. “Um. Thank you. For keeping me company.”

Toni lifts her shoulder. In the sudden bright lights of the hallway, so consciously aware of Andrew’s gaze scrutinising their every move, she suddenly feels exposed, like he’s just introduced on something private. “Yeah, sure. I mean. You’re not shit company, I guess.”

Shelby smiles at that. “I’ll... see you around?”

“Yeah. See you. Have fun in Lit.”

“Have fun painting.” She lifts her bag onto her shoulder, and then pauses, like she wants to say something else. Toni waits, but after a few moments, Shelby’s mouth closes, and she steps backward, nodding. “See you later.”

“Bye.”

Toni watches her retreating form as she approaches Andrew by the door. She stands on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek, which he returns, and then, hand in hand, they leave. The last thing Toni hears before they walk out of earshot is Andrew asking, “Was that Toni Shalifoe?”

Toni clenches her jaw. She puts her headphones back in, presses play, and turns her music as loud as it will go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ik getting locked in is trope city but this is why we r in the business of fic


	6. Chapter 6

It all starts when Fatin makes a group chat.

Toni wakes up one morning to see over thirty notifications from something called _Romeo and her lesbian cargo pants_ all from a string of unknown numbers. She quickly deduces that it’s a chat for everyone involved with the play, partially because the chat picture is a selfie of Fatin kissing the front of her script over the name _Romeo_ , but mostly because the first text (presumably from Fatin herself) reads _hey bitches i thought we needed a forum to air out our complaints_.

The text is from 4:12am. Toni’s not sure if it makes it funnier or worrying.

Twenty-seven of the thirty-four notifications for the group chat are from Fatin, most of them her bitching about Gretchen and her outdated balayage, but also one asking on a genuine note if anyone would be up for scheduling another rehearsal so they could practice the masquerade scene with the full orchestra. (Which means Regan. Toni bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.) There’s a response for another unknown number, _Fatin it’s the ass crack of dawn why are you awake_ , and then Fatin’s reply: _the more important question is_ _why are YOU awake and not at my house dottie xxxxx_.

The text that catches Toni’s eye, though, is the most recent one, sent at 6:45.

 **Unknown** : _I’m more than happy to do another rehearsal if you need it Fatin!! Just let me know what afternoons you’re free and I can move my schedule around a bit. This is Shelby btw xx_

Toni tongues at the cut of her lip, and then clicks on Shelby’s number. Her profile picture is of her in a cornflower-blue dress, a bouquet of flowers in the crook of her elbow, her other hand touching the tiara on top of her head, and a sash emblazoned with _2018 TEXAS PAGEANT QUEEN_ draped across her torso. Her eyes are wide, face split in a smile. Toni almost wants to scoff: of fucking course she’s won pageants. She couldn’t be any more typical. But something stops her. Instead, she zooms in a little on her face. Shelby is undeniably beautiful here, not just because of the makeup and glitter and pretty dress, but more how happy she looks: her face is almost _glowing_ with how radiant she seems. Toni doesn’t think she’s ever seen her smile like that before.

Toni sucks her lip into her mouth, considering; and then instinctively saves her number.

Just in case.

*

Today in rehearsal they are blocking the fight scene between Romeo, Tybalt and Mercutio. Toni’s privately been looking forward to this, mostly because the idea of Jeanette and Rachel having to stage-fight each other is hysterical and makes the weeks of spending her free time on YouTube learning how to paint cityscapes wholly worth it. The break from all the romance is an added bonus. If Toni never hears Gretchen say _bedroom eyes_ ever again it’ll still be too soon.

Shelby has another thing coming if she thinks that she can take the opportunity to sit and chat with Martha the whole rehearsal, though. Just because she and Toni apologised does _not_ mean they’re friends. She’s still insufferable even if she isn’t a homophobe.

“We’re placing bets on who cries first,” Fatin says as she sidles up to her. Today she is wearing sunglasses as thin as her finger perched on the very end of her nose. Toni can’t imagine they’re very practical. “What are your predictions?”

“What are yours?”

“Jeanette.”

Toni looks over to where they’re warming up. Rachel is jogging lightly on the spot and checking her watch, and nearby Jeanette is doing lunges. You’d think they were going to fucking war. “Five dollars on Rachel.”

“Rachel? Is she even _able_ to cry?”

“Probably.”

Fatin makes a considering noise. “I guess if all chlorine got into her tear ducts. You have mad confidence, Shalifoe.”

Toni shrugs. Truthfully, Rachel’s own anger feels a little too close to comfort for Toni’s liking. Her profile picture in the group chat was her with her teammates, dripping wet and in swimming costumes, heads pebbled like candy with swimming caps; it’s not dissimilar to the way Toni still wears basketball shorts to school. She knows too much about investing energy into another thing in the hopes it’ll lead her back to what she really wants.

“You have mad confidence for thinking it’s gonna be Jeanette,” she says instead.

Fatin scoffs. “Please, Jeanette won’t say boo to a goose. I know I’m right.”

“Any bets on Dot?”

“My Dottie’s a strong bitch. She won’t falter. Twenty dollars on Gretchen, though.”

Which is barely fair, because Gretchen has cried every rehearsal so far. Toni says as much and Fatin tweaks the end of her plait affectionately. “Sucks to be you, then.”

Toni just rolls her eyes and turns back to the door, watching as everyone slowly trickles their way in, Jeanette in her peripheral hilariously strapping on knee- and elbow-pads like she’s about to skate a roller derby. Still, as person after person wanders through, Dot is nowhere to be seen: and neither, Toni realises, is Shelby.

She frowns. Not that she was paying attention, or cares anyway, but Shelby’s usually the first one in, attached to Martha’s arm or pulling eyes with whatever pastel shade she’s managed to find a cardigan in this time.

She wonders if she’s okay.

Dot’s absence rings like a death knell as each minute passes. It looks Fatin might win the bet early, because the furrow line between Gretchen’s eyes gets more and more noticeably pronounced the longer they wait. “Where _is_ she?” she snaps.

“She might be ill,” Martha offers.

“She’s missed over half our rehearsals. This is just inexcusable.” Gretchen takes a deep breath, and smooths her hair behind her ears. “We’ll just have to do it without her. We’ll stage Mercutio and Tybalt’s fight as we wait for her to show up.”

“Do you know where she is?” Toni says to Fatin, as Jeanette dutifully starts reciting her lines.

Fatin shrugs, though her gaze is troubled. “She hasn’t texted.”

“Maybe they’re taking a stand,” Martha says. “Shelby isn’t here either.”

Toni can’t help it. “Do you... know why?”

Martha shakes her head. “She wasn’t in class, and she hasn’t been answering my texts. Maybe she’s also ill.”

Toni chews on her lower lip consideringly. After a long moment’s deliberation, she slides her phone out of her pocket, opening up Shelby’s saved contact. Her profile picture beams up at her: the wide, jubilant grin, her eyes, mermaid-green against the flash of the camera and scrunched up into half-moons because of how wide she’s smiling.

Thing is, they’re not friends – they’re not. Half an hour locked in together means nothing other than Toni knowing she’s not being actively discriminated against – but she’s never known Shelby to miss school, ever. She’s listened to Shelby sniffle the morning announcements over the intercom too many times to think that this is usual for her.

She chews the inside of her cheek, and then clicks back into the chat. The text blocks blinks at her tauntingly. She glances next to her at Martha, who is involved in some complicated tic-tac-toe game with Fatin, and then looks back down at her screen.

In a moment of impulse, she types out _you weren’t at rehearsal today, hope you’re ok._

Her thumb hovers over the send button. She imagines Shelby sick in bed, rolling over and checking her phone to see a text from Toni. Would she be confused, or would be smile in the same way she did in the picture?

But then she imagines the other alternative: Shelby, skipping school with Andrew, probably having sex in his truck in a field. Or not sex. Sexually-charged hand-holding, or whatever the fuck Christian couples get up to. She supposes maybe talking, only Andrew doesn’t seem like the kind to divulge traumas and secrets. She pictures Shelby checking her phone and seeing Toni’s text, Andrew reading over her shoulder, face twisting like it did the other day when he found them in the auditorium. _Was that Toni Shalifoe?_

“Jeanette, stop flinching,” Gretchen snaps, from the front of the room. “Rachel isn’t going to kill you.”

“ _Someone’s_ clearly in menopause,” Martha says, as she absently arranges a string around her fingers. “Toni, help me, I’m trying to do cat’s cradle.”

Toni glances down at Martha’s fingers. “You’ve got it all tangled.”

“I know, help me unpick it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s _sake_ ,” Rachel snarls, and Toni looks up to see her throw her wooden sword to the ground. “Klein, she’s not even trying!”

“Please don’t call me Klein,” Gretchen says, voice pained.

Jeanette holds up her hands in defence. “You keep coming at me aggressively!”

Rachel looks like she wants to run Jeanette through with her sword. “Yeah, no shit, dumbass, we’re staging a fucking _fight_!”

“Don’t call me a dumbass! And we haven’t even started fighting!”

“Girls,” Gretchen interrupts. “As much as I encourage open communication and expression in this room, the constant use of expletives is beginning to pollute the positive energy of the space.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. Toni genuinely wonders how her hair hasn’t gone grey yet. “Just—go again, from the top. Jeanette, pull yourself together.”

Rachel eyes them both mutinously, but she reaches down to pick up her sword anyway. Just as she opens her mouth to start reciting her lines, the sound of door hinges squealing cuts through the room, and everyone turns to see Dot slip through the doors. Fatin stands up but Gretchen beats her to it.

“Dot Campbell,” she announces, voice scathing. “So nice of you to finally join us.”

“Sorry,” Dot mutters as she hurries towards the stage. “I got held up.”

Gretchen’s contemptuous _hm_ clearly betrays just how little she believes her, but aside from roving a hairy eyeball over her as she drops her bag by the orchestra pit and scurries up the steps towards the stage, she leaves it. “Very well,” she says. “You’re lucky you weren’t needed for a portion of this scene or I wouldn’t be so forgiving. Sit down by everyone else while I finish up this section and then we can start staging your entrance.”

Rachel and Jeanette resume their scene as Dot collapses next to Fatin on the floor. So close, Toni can see just how bad she looks: her eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot like she’s been crying, have dark purple circles beneath them, and her hair is limp and greasy.

Toni doesn’t miss the flash of concern in Fatin’s eyes. Her voice, however, is completely calm when she says, “Have to say, Dottie, if we were judging based on dramatic entrance, you’d be number one with a bullet every time.”

“Thanks,” Dot says dryly. “Nice glasses.”

Fatin touches them. “Chic, huh?”

“And impractical.”

“I think they’re cool,” Martha offers.

“Is everything okay, Dot?” Toni says. “Why were you late?”

Dot glances at her uncomfortably, and shrugs. “Just... had stuff on.”

So she’s not sharing to them either. It must be something serious; Toni’s gotten all too good at spotting bone-deep aches in people. Probably a byproduct of carrying too many herself. She offers a small smile that Dot, after a brief pause, returns. Understanding shifts between them.

The moment is broken when Martha lets out a squeak as her fingers get tangled even tighter in the cat’s cradle.

“By the way,” Fatin says, “you’re all coming to my party tonight, right?”

“Of course,” Toni says dryly, “how could we forget?” Fatin has been talking about this for days now, encouraging everyone in the play to come. _We’re bonded by trauma!_ was her argument, because she clearly knows how to win a crowd. Still, it must have somehow worked, because Toni knows a lot of the girls are coming: Fatin is infamous across school for her parties. She has the best house and the best booze, and rumour has it the last one got shut down by the police three times. Most of them are probably flattered she even asked anyway.

“Do we need to bring anything?” Martha says, as she attempts to extricate her fingers from the string. “I’m really good at brownies, aren’t I, Toni?”

“Your brownies are pretty fucking good,” Toni allows.

Fatin laughs. “No, no, not that kind of party. Like a real party, with booze! No one’s really going to be eating anything there, not unless you spike the brownies.”

Martha looks alarmed. “With alcohol?”

“With weed.”

“I think that would mess up the ratio of ingredients.”

“We’ll just bring ourselves,” Toni says.

“Epic,” Fatin says. She swings an arm around Dot’s shoulders. “You’re coming too, right, Dottie? My number one?”

Dot shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’m really tired.”

Fatin pouts. “Please?”

“I’m not really in the mood.”

“Not in the mood for a party? Everyone’s in the mood for a party. I mean, look at this place.” Fatin gestures to where Rachel and Jeanette are fighting, Leah nearby reading her lines. They all look like they want to kill someone: Rachel looks like she wants to kill Jeanette, Jeanette looks like she wants to kill Rachel. Leah looks like she wants to kill herself. “Dottie, come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll get you free drinks?”

Dot still looks unconvinced. “I don’t know, Fatin...”

“What if I guaranteed you the best night of your life?”

“That’s quite a guarantee,” Toni says. “Does she get free returns if it doesn’t measure up?”

Fatin swats at her. “Don’t be cheeky.”

Dot still looks torn, but before she can say anything Gretchen calls, “Dot, you’re up!” It’s telling about Fatin’s persistence that Dot looks like she’s grateful for the reprieve.

“I’ll think about it,” she allows, as she stands.

“You won’t regret it,” Fatin promises. Dot rolls her eyes at her as she walks away towards where Gretchen is stood, where she is immediately handed a wooden sword. Suddenly she doesn’t look so grateful anymore, which despite herself is enough to get a smile out of Toni.

“Can one of you guys help me?” Martha says. “I think I’m stuck.”

As Fatin immediately leaps to action and starts trying to detangle the knots in the string with her long, painted fingernails, Toni switches on her phone again and looks down at the unsent message. Suddenly she’s hit by an acute sense of awareness. It’s just one rehearsal. Everyone here has missed at least one rehearsal – hell, she missed one the other day because she had a headache. She doesn’t text them whenever they’re gone.

She deletes the text, and then switches her phone off for good.

It’s better this way.

*

Fatin’s party can be heard from down the street.

By the time Martha and Toni arrive, the house is already filled to the brim, music blaring so loudly the sidewalk beneath their feet trembles with every beat. Toni doesn’t know why she had expected it to be a small gathering with just girls from theatre – this is Fatin she’s talking about. Her idea of a small gathering is probably fifty people.

Inside is even louder. Toni has to elbow people out the way so she and Martha can squeeze through to the kitchen, and when they get there there’s already a bra hanging from the ceiling light. Fatin is stood near a marble island in the middle of the room, wearing a tight sparkly black dress and heels that look like they could be used to kill a man, and when she spies them through the crowds she grins and waves them over.

“My bitches!” she says when they’re near enough, tipsily pulling them both in a hug. She accidentally spills some of the beer from the bottle she’s clutching down Toni’s back. “Hey, glad you made it! Make yourself a drink!”

Boosted on the counter next to her is Dot, who thankfully looks a little better than this morning. She’s got a cigarette in one hand and a bowl of Doritos in the other. “She’s been drinking since eighth period,” she says, when she catches Toni distastefully dabbing at the damp shoulder of her sweater. “I’m surprised she’s still upright.”

“Come dance with me!” Fatin shouts, tugging at Martha’s hand. Martha delightedly follows her, turning to give Toni an excited thumbs-up before she disappears in the throngs of the dance floor. Amusedly, Toni watches her go.

“You’re not joining?” Dot says.

“Are you?” Toni fires back.

Dot grins. “Touché.” She offers her a puff of her cigarette, which Toni declines. Then she offers her the Doritos instead, which Toni graciously accepts, hoisting herself on the counter next to her and crossing her legs, cradling the bowl between them. “Nice party, huh?”

Toni spies Jeanette across the room doing jazz-squares with a girl from her History class. “I’m surprised she didn’t invite Gretchen, too.”

“The night’s still young,” Dot says, though she looks equally as turned off by that idea as Toni feels. She pulls a face. “Yeah, if that happens I can’t be sober. Want me to get you a drink?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Dot salutes her and jumps down to the ground. “Leave me some Doritos.”

“Don’t count on it.”

Toni sniggers as Dot flips her off over her retreating shoulder, and tightens her grip on the bowl. She’s trying not to drink too much tonight – Linn would hit the fucking ceiling if she came home drunk, and she’s only _just_ gotten out of the Regan-related woods. She needs at least another week before she does something else that sends Linn into a moral upset for the next month.

At that moment, her eyes catch on something through the glass sliding doors into the garden. The garden itself is pretty much deserted, the weather erring on the side of too cold for anyone to want to use it to hang out, but there’s a lone figure huddled on the back deck, nursing a bottle of wine.

A figure that looks a hell of a lot like Shelby.

Toni sets the Doritos to the side and slides off the counter, pushing through the dance floor to the doors. Sure enough, as she gets closer, she sees that it is, indeed, Shelby, and the familiar shape of her long blond ponytail, which is not a ponytail at all but loose around her shoulders like a golden cape. Toni hesitates in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed.

Why is she here? Despite her previous inclinations, she didn’t actually believe Shelby had bunked off school with Andrew. Someone taking that many AP classes and who gets that panicky at the idea of missing first period wouldn’t voluntarily miss an entire day of school. Toni had assumed she was just sick enough that she couldn’t drag herself to school and croak the weather forecast over the intercom – but this doesn’t look very sick to her.

Impulsively, she steps out onto the deck. The cold air accosts her immediately; she hadn’t realised how cool it was until she was no longer surrounded by dozens of sweaty, writhing bodies, and she folds her arms tightly against her chest to fend off the chill.

“Shelby?” she says.

Shelby turns, and yeah, she’s super fucking drunk. “Toni?” she says. She brandishes the wine bottle at her like a cutlass. “Hey!”

“Hey.” Toni steps closer and sits next to her at the end of the deck, keeping a safe distance in case Shelby decides to throw up. The grass is cold and damp against her exposed ankles. She wraps her arms under her knees, and then risks a glance at Shelby, who is takes a swig of the wine bottle. Toni’s never seen her like this before – mussed, rumpled, drunk out of her fucking mind. She’s not even dressed like she normally in, in sweatpants and a hoodie (granted, they both probably separately cost more than Toni’s entire outfit, but it’s such a far cry from the dainty sunny crop tops and dresses that it’s as though she’s looking at Shelby’s homeless twin).

She turns back to face the garden, which in the darkness is draped in dark blue shadows, the leaves of the hedges silvery in the moonlight, and licks her lips. “You, uh. You weren’t rehearsal today.”

“Nope,” Shelby says, with a hiccup.

Toni watches her out of the corner of her eye as she takes another long sip. Jesus Christ, how drunk is she? Shelby doesn’t seem like the kind to do a lot of recreational drinking – she must have the alcohol tolerance of a sponge. Suddenly Toni begins to feel a little worried.

“I feel like you might be going a little too far on the whole blood of Christ thing,” she says, aiming for levity. Shelby giggles.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she slurs. She cradles the wine bottle close to her chest, closing her eyes and resting her temple against the rim of it. “I can do whatever I like.”

Toni raises her eyebrows at her, but doesn’t push the matter. “Whatever you say.”

They sit in silence for a little, the only sound the faint rumble of traffic from the road and the muted pound of music from inside. Through it all Shelby steadily keeps drinking, the angle of the wine bottle becoming steeper and steeper as she lifts it higher to chase the remnants. Each sip is punctuated with a bubbly hiccup, and though she tries her best to beat it back to the recesses of her mind Toni becomes more and more concerned. Nearly a whole bottle of wine isn’t good for anyone, not even Fatin, whose bloodstream probably consists mostly of alcohol, but especially for Shelby, who Toni would bet on never having drank seriously before.

Finally, she can’t keep it in any longer. “Hey, should I call Andrew or something?”

“No!” Shelby blurts.

Toni flinches back at her vehemence. “Okay, Jesus,” she mutters, “sorry,” but Shelby fixes her with a wide-eyed panicked look, bridging the gap between them to cling to the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Please don’t get Andrew,” she pleads, sounding almost near tears. “No Andrew.”

“I won’t, I won’t.”

“Promise?”

Jesus. “Yes, I promise.”

Reassured, Shelby nods, and sits back. Her hand is still clenched in Toni’s jumper; Toni wonders if she even remembers it’s still there.

“Why don’t you want me to get Andrew?” she asks carefully.

She’s half-anticipating another outburst, but Shelby acts like she’s barely heard her, slumping down over the wine bottle and taking another pitiful sip. Toni is suddenly aware that the gap between them has become considerably smaller, and her throat goes a little dry.

“Do you think you’re a bad person?” Shelby says, which is the fucking last thing Toni expects out of her mouth.

“Uh,” she says. Jesus. What a loaded question. “I guess so. Sometimes.”

“Mm.” Shelby twists her mouth consideringly. Her long hair sticks to the condensation of the bottle. “Do you think _I’m_ a bad person?”

“I don’t know you that well.”

“But if you had to say.”

Toni lets out a nervous laugh. “Well, you know I’m a little biased.”

“Exactly!” Shelby says, so loudly Toni flinches backwards again. “Because you’re _gay_. And you think I’m _homophobic_.”

“I don’t think you’re homophobic.”

Shelby gives her a wide-eyed, plaintive look. “You don’t?”

Toni feels extremely awkward. “I mean, you said you weren’t bothered by the gay thing.”

Shelby nods. Just when Toni’s about to think the conversation is over, she turns back to the wine bottle and says, “Today is her anniversary.”

“Whose?”

“Becca.”

“Oh.” Becca. Right. Because that makes any more sense. “Like, her... dating anniversary?”

“No. She died.”

Oh, _shit_.

Toni glances at Shelby alarmed, but Shelby is still staring out aimlessly at the lawn, running a finger around the mouth of the bottle. Her eyes are cool and distant.

“It was my fault,” she says, “did you know that? It was my fault. I was so...” She inhales sharply. He voice wavers, and for a terrible moment Toni thinks she’s about to cry. “I was so fucking mean, Toni. I’m so sorry. I was so bad. I was such a bad person.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

Shelby doesn’t respond; instead, she turns to face Toni. Her pupils are blown wide. She looks like a fucking mess. It’s only when Toni smells the alcohol on her breath does she realise just how close their faces are. “I’m drunk,” she says, like this is a revelation.

“Really,” Toni says.

“You want to know who I thought of during our practice? Because it wasn’t Andrew.”

Shelby’s gaze is intense, pinning Toni to the ground. Toni’s pulse quickens. Is Shelby about to confess to cheating right now? Fuck, she’s not drunk or prepared enough for this. “Really,” she manages again, throat closing in.

Shelby nods slowly, never once breaking eye contact. She licks her lips and opens her mouth, as if to speak, but before she can, there’s a gentle snick, and: “Oh, _there_ you are.”

If there was a prize for bad timing, Andrew Johnson would win first prize every fucking time.

Shelby pulls back to turn to look to the newcomer, and Toni finally feels a rush of air fill her lungs. Though she’s annoyed at the intrusion, mostly on principal, she won’t lie and say she’s not grateful for the distance between them now. Having Shelby so close, green gaze urgent and razor-sharp despite how very obviously intoxicated she was, made Toni’s head spin a little, and she coughs to relieve the pressure building in her chest.

Fuck. What _was_ that?

She turns around just in time to see Shelby nearly face-plant as she attempts to stand. Andrew quickly rushes for her, catching her before she can hit the ground, and he distastefully pulls a face when he sees how unfocused her eyes are, smells the pungent alcohol on her breath.

“Jesus, Shelby,” he says, “are you _drunk_?”

“No,” Shelby says, which would be a lot more convincing if she were able to stand by herself.

Andrew closes his eyes in frustration. “Goddamn it,” he mutters. Toni’s a little surprised by his language – as far as she knows he’s as much a Bible-thumper as Shelby herself, and Toni knows she’d be caught dead before she used the Lord’s name in vain like that. “Does your dad know you’re drinking like this?”

Shelby just giggles a little, swaying on her feet. His grip around her waist tightens, and for the first time his eyes fall on Toni, still sat down.

“What did you do to her?” he says.

Toni frowns indignantly. “What?”

“Did you give her the wine?”

Toni stares at him. What the _fuck_? “She’s not three. I found her like this.”

Andrew’s face becomes pinched in frustration, and he turns back to Shelby. “Okay, we need to get you home,” he begins, but she immediately thrashes away.

“No!” she says. “No, you can’t, I’ll be in such trouble!” Covertly, like it’s a secret, she poorly whispers, “I’m not meant to drink like this.”

“How much have you drank?”

Shelby scrunches up her face like she’s thinking. “Only a... a li’l bit. Like—” She narrows her fingers together. “Like this much.”

“What about the wine?”

“And the wine.”

Andrew scrubs a hand down his face. “Jesus, Shelby,” he hisses. “Can you just get yourself together? You’re gonna end up just like Becca.”

Toni feels her spine go rigid. She doesn’t know a lot about whatever the deal is with this Becca, but even she knows that was a complete overstep. For the first time, she is grateful that Shelby’s so drunk, because she barely reacts: if she’s this fucked up over the death of her friend, Toni doesn’t want to imagine how she’d react to a comment like that. She stands, suddenly; so overcome with anger, anger on Shelby’s behalf and also anger towards Andrew for being a fucking prick.

She doesn’t know what possesses her, but she blurts, “I’ll take her.”

 _What_?

Andrew glances at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m... a friend.” What the fuck is she _doing_? “Look, just let me take her home. She can crash at mine, my parents won’t care.”

Andrew holds her gaze for a few more moments, before glancing down at Shelby in his arms, who is staring at Toni with an inscrutable look in her eyes. Finally, he sighs. “Fine,” he mutters. “She can be your problem.”

He thrusts Shelby towards her, and stalks back inside before Toni’s even taken a step. She barely manages to catch her before Shelby falls face-first in the grass off the edge of the deck, and slings her arm around her neck. “Okay, Peaches, you’re with me.”

Shelby giggles against her neck. “Peaches. That’s funny.”

Toni ignores her, and drags her inside. Somehow in the ten minutes she was outside, the population of the party has seemingly doubled, because the floor is packed from wall-to-wall. Toni barely is able to push herself through, let alone the drunken mess attached to her hip as well. She keeps an eye out for Martha, trying to see if she can find her to let her know she’s leaving early, and finds her thankfully only a few feet away chatting to Fatin, who is currently filling up a row of shot glasses with vodka.

“Martha!” she calls.

Somehow, Martha hears her over the pounding music, and looks up, face splitting in a grin. She’s definitely a little tipsy, but unlike some people also knows how to hold her liquor. “Toni, hey, we were just talking about you!” she says. Then her gaze falls to Shelby next to her. “Shelby?”

Shelby giggles. “Hi Marty.”

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Fatin says. Her grin is feral. “Is she _drunk_?”

“I’m taking her home,” Toni says. “Martha, will you be okay getting back?”

“Yeah, Fatin said I can sleep over.” Martha’s gaze is a little worried. “Is she okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” Toni says. Mostly convincing herself.

Martha reaches out and squeezes her hand. “Text me when you get home, okay?”

“I will. See you later.”

“Love you, Marty,” Shelby slurs.

“Love you too, Shelby.”

The night air is like a cold smack in the face when Toni and Shelby finally emerge from the front door. Toni’s ears are still ringing from the sheer volume of the music, and she pauses at the end of Fatin’s front lawn just to breathe. Shelby sways from her shoulder, and then turns and vomits in a rose bush.

Better here than on her, in any case. “You okay?”

“I think so,” Shelby says. She sounds a little more coherent, though her face is drawn and pale and she’s still swaying on the spot. “Toni, I don’t feel so good.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you drink an entire thing of wine.” Somewhere along the way from the garden to now, Toni managed to snag a bottle of lying unopened on the counter top. As she cracks it open she has a momentary panic that it’s just straight vodka and she’s about to get Shelby even more drunk, so she takes an experimental sniff before she passes it over, but thankfully it’s just regular filtered water. Shelby seems to find this humorous, though, because when she takes the bottle she gives it a sniff too.

Okay. So still drunk. Though it’s sort of adorable to see that drunk Shelby is a total dork.

Toni doesn’t trust that she’s still okay to walk by herself, so she keeps her arm slung over her shoulders as they walk towards the bus stop. Pressed together like this, she can feel Shelby’s body heat radiating against her from shoulder to hip, and she feels her ears go a little hot at the thought. She quickly beats it down. What the fuck, she’s not some pubescent boy with a crush. She needs to calm down.

She’s probably a little drunk, too. She ignores the part of her head that tells her she didn’t drink anything.

The bus is pulling in just as they arrive to the bus stop, so they quickly hurry on. This late, it’s mostly deserted, only a few people nodding off against windows or looking down at their phones, so she takes Shelby’s hand and guides her down the aisle to the back, nudging her across the row so she’s sandwiched in between Toni and the window. It’s not a long ride by any means, but it’s long enough for Shelby’s eyes to start drooping, her head dropping down against Toni’s shoulders every few minutes before she jerks herself awake. All the way, Toni keeps making her drink the water, needing her to sober up even a little before they reach home.

Fuck. _Home_. Linn will probably be asleep, as will all the other kids, but she’s got ears like a fucking bat. Toni won’t get as much shit as she would’ve if she were the drunk one, but by no means is bringing a drunk girl back completely fine either – fuck, she really didn’t think this through at all.

“Are we nearly there?” Shelby whispers.

“Nearly,” Toni says.

“M’tired.”

“Drinking that much will do that to you.” Still, Shelby looks so miserable that Toni can’t help but take pity on her. “You can... sleep on my shoulder, if you want.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Shelby says, but within minutes her head is dropping again; only this time, she doesn’t jerk awake, instead settles down hesitantly against Toni’s shoulder. Toni feels her chest tighten. Shelby’s hair still smells strongly of vodka, but also peaches, her signature scent, and when Toni hesitantly rests her cheek against the top of her head, her hair is so impossibly soft against her cheek.

Toni closes her eyes, and tries not to think too hard about it.

Finally, the bus pulls into their stop. She gently nudges Shelby awake, and together they climb off, the nearly-empty water bottle clutched tightly in Shelby’s hand like she’s afraid it’ll run away if she doesn’t grip it hard enough. She still seems a little tipsy so Toni keeps a close berth, ready to catch her if she looks like she’s about to fall over, but Shelby mostly stays quiet, gaze distant.

The trailer park feels almost ghostly so late, the only light the faint squares of yellow coming from some of the camper vans. Toni digs her key out of her back pocket when she reaches their trailer and unlocks the door as quietly as possible, helping Shelby up the steps and silently shutting the door behind her.

Seeing Shelby stood in their tiny vinyl kitchenette is a level of surreal Toni doesn’t have the capacity to comprehend. She helps her through the kitchen and down the tiny cramped corridor to her room right at the end. It’s barely big enough to be called a room – more a broom cupboard than anything – and she shares it with one of Linn’s other foster kids, Ally (yet another thing she didn’t think through, fuck) but when she creaks open the door, Ally is fast asleep on the camper bed at the very end of the room.

Thank fuck.

Shelby’s nearly dead on her feet at this point, so Toni quickly pulls her through the room and deposits her on her bed. She shucks off her sneakers and jacket, but when she turns back around Shelby’s already fast asleep, curled sideways on the bed, still wearing her shoes and coat. Her long hair is fanned across the pillow and her lips are parted; faint puffs of breath audible in the silence of the room.

Toni pauses, her jacket halfway down her arms, just watching her. She looks so vulnerable and small like this, fast asleep, the lines driven into her brow by worry completely smoothed over.

She almost looks like the girl in the profile picture: without worries or cares. Just happy.

Toni quickly changes into her pajamas – an old sleep shirt and shorts – and then hesitantly slides into the bed next to Shelby. She hadn’t anticipated sharing a bed at all: was going to take the duvet and make a nest on the floor for her to sleep on, but Shelby’s fallen asleep on top of the duvet, and Toni can’t bring herself to wake her. Instead, she gently pries the duvet from where it’s pooled around Shelby’s legs, takes her shoes off, and then slips in next to her. She feels the inches between them like they burn red hot.

This close, she can see a faint spray of freckles across Shelby’s nose; her eyes flickering beneath her eyelids.

Toni rolls over and closes her eyes.

Fuck. What is happening to her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's called a crush toni


	7. Chapter 7

Toni wakes up balanced at the very edge of her bed with a crick in her neck.

She feels disoriented, unable to remember anything from the night before: only knows that her back hurts like fuck and she probably needs to go shopping for more cereal. It can’t be later than eight or nine, judging by the thin sunlight coming through the window, and for a few moments she wonders what the hell she’s doing up so early on a Saturday.

Then she rolls over and thinks, _oh, right._

Shelby lies no more than a foot away from her, long golden hair spread out on the pillow. Just looking at her has all the memories from last night come rushing back in a flood: Fatin’s party; Shelby, drinking herself to oblivion on the back deck; Andrew, face twisted in frustration and irritation, _you’re gonna end up just like Becca_.

Toni, standing: _I’ll take her_.

 _Fuck_. Shelby Goodkind is in her fucking _bed_.

It all seems so much real now in the severe light of the morning. The curtains, two thin scarves Toni and Ally found for half a dollar each at a thrift store when Linn refused to shell out money for real ones, turn the sunlight coming through the window orange, draping them both in amber shadows. If someone took a photo of them Toni’s sure they’d look like something from a painting, hazed in gold, their noses only scarce inches apart. Reality is a little different: mostly Shelby smells like a liquor store, and keeps smacking her lips like even in her subconscious she’s aware the inside of her mouth is as dry as a desert and also probably tastes like death. It all takes morning breath to a new level.

 _I would not let her kiss me until she’s brushed her teeth_ , Toni thinks, bizarrely. Then, _what the fuck?_ She wouldn’t let Shelby kiss her _period_.

Hangover thoughts, probably. (Did she even drink anything?)

Shelby looks a lot more fragile like this. Toni’s never really seen anyone up close for so long, and she takes the excuse to simply lie there and watch her, eyes roving across the contours of her face. She’s not wearing any makeup, it either having been smudged off across the course of the night or never having been applied, and without it she looks almost vulnerable: the skin beneath her eyes is bruised violet, her cheeks blushed pink, and there’s a faint smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose that Toni’s never noticed before. Behind her closed lids her eyes flicker with activity.

Toni wonders what she’s thinking of.

And then Shelby lets out a sigh, pushing her face deeper into the pillow. Her nose scrunches up, and before Toni can do anything, like sit up, or at least pretend she wasn’t fucking staring at her for twenty minutes, she opens her eyes.

Toni freezes.

For a long, long moment all they do is stare at each other. Shelby’s eyes are wide and a little startled, and Toni is no doubt her mirror, probably looking like a deer caught in headlights as her heart pounds guiltily. Could Shelby sense somehow that she was just lying there watching her? How long has it been? (Did Toni also mention that their noses are _five fucking inches apart?_ )

And then Shelby’s eyes flicker questioningly above Toni’s head, probably in search of a clock, or maybe a shot-for-shot replay of the night so she can see exactly the series of events that led her here, but instead she must look straight at the window, because she then screws her eyes shut with a pained moan and brings her hand up to cover her face, and, oh yeah, probably also super fucking hungover.

“Morning,” says Toni, mostly out of nothing else to say.

Shelby makes an unintelligible sound.

Mildly, Toni says, “Didn’t quite get that.”

“My head hurts.” It’s petulant and muffled into the pillow, and despite herself Toni cracks a smile. Okay, sue her. Even a stone-cold bastard can’t admit that grumpy Shelby isn’t kind of fucking adorable.

“Yeah, well, welcome to the morning after.”

There is an even longer pause, and when Shelby finally speaks, her voice is quiet and hesitant. “After... what? Where am I?”

Toni watches her. How drunk did she have to be not to remember _anything_? She pushes herself up on one elbow, watches Shelby’s bloodshot eyes belatedly track the movement through her fingers. “I took you home. My home,” she clarifies quietly, when Shelby squints at her. “I didn’t think you were in a great shape to be going home to Daddy Disciple like this.”

Finally, the look of anxiety leaves her face, and she huffs out a small laugh, then winces when it no doubt worsens her headache. “Ow, jeez.”

Toni does not envy her right now. “Yeah, that’s gotta feel like ass.”

“ _I_ feel like ass. Did I... drink a lot?”

“I distinctly remember a topless bar dance.”

Shelby’s eyes grow to the size of saucers, and she fixes her with a look of such alarm that Toni can’t help but laugh.

“Just kidding.”

“Oh my gosh,” Shelby breathes, and collapses back against the pillows, throwing an arm over her eyes. “My headache is too bad for jokes.”

“Sorry,” and she is, a little. “Do you want breakfast?”

“You aren’t by any chance serving a magical hangover cure, are you?”

Toni snorts. “That’s cute, rich girl. Just cornflakes. But if you’re nice I’ll make you a coffee.”

Shelby’s smile is small but so earnest that Toni’s heart stutters a little in her chest. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

Getting out of bed together proves to be one of the most uncomfortable things Toni’s ever had the displeasure of experiencing. She recognises that it is mostly in her head but if she thought waking up nose-to-nose with Shelby Goodkind was surreal it’s nothing compared to seeing her stood in her box-cupboard of a room. She’s still wearing her clothes from the night before, her hair mussed on one side from where she slept on it, and her bare feet on the floorboards feel oddly vulnerable; it’s as though someone has taken bright sparkly Shelby and peeled back half a dozen layers, left her exposed and naked in Toni’s cramped bedroom. Thankfully, it’s empty aside from them, Ally having made herself scarce at some point before Toni woke up, but Toni can already hear the low murmur of voices from Linn’s room half a foot away on the other side of the thin plywood separator between them as the baby wakes up. (He’s a temporary foster, only with them for a few weeks while they try and juggle his place at the local care home, but Toni privately dreads the day he leaves, only because he’s been like a balm to Linn’s perpetual crabbiness.)

Shelby is seemingly oblivious. “Um, Toni?”

“Mm?”

“I was just wondering if I could maybe borrow a shirt?” Shelby looks a little embarrassed even having to ask, plucking at the front of her sweatshirt unhappily. “I think I spilled something on this last night; it’s a little damp.”

Toni’s hardly surprised; the wine bottle had been empty by the time Shelby had put it down, and the bigger miracle would have been Shelby not in hospital with alcohol poisoning if she hadn’t spilled at least a third. “Yeah, sure.”

She and Ally share a small set of drawers crammed in the scant space between their two beds, so she has to paw through a lot of her own old hand-me-downs until she comes across something suitable. It ends up being an old red jersey that she used to wear to basketball practice, and she throws it at Shelby.

“This should fit.”

“Thank you so much,” Shelby says earnestly. She makes a move to lift her shirt before pausing, the tips of her ears going pink. “Um, would you mind...”

“Oh, right.” Toni quickly turns around, feeling her own face heat. Fuck, how stupid did she look, just standing there, as if she was willing for Shelby to get changed in front of her? She probably just set the predatory lesbian stereotype back fifty years.

She also probably is way overthinking this. _Calm down_ , she tells herself.

“You can turn back around now,” Shelby says, so Toni does. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Shelby in her jersey, tugging at the hem like she’s unsure of it. “How’s it look?”

Toni’s tongue feels a little too big for her mouth. “Not bad, Goodkind,” she manages.

Shelby grins at her, a little shyly. “Yeah? I feel like I’m about to win a championship.”

That’s enough to pull Toni out of her thoughts. “Probably the ghost of all the championships I did win in it.”

“I’ll take care of it. No spillages here. I’m a neat eater.”

Toni snorts. She’s such a fucking dork. “Come on, then, Peaches.”

She leads Shelby out of her room to the kitchenette. She doesn’t even realise she’s treading lightly until she turns and sees Shelby almost subconsciously mimicking her actions, making sure to step only where she did and avoiding all the same floorboards, like she knows that there’s a reason she’s trying to be quiet. It’s so strangely thoughtful of her that Toni feels something she hadn’t realised was coiled tight in her chest unfurl a little.

Unlike the bedroom, the kitchen is surrounded on all sides by dingy dirty windows, which clearly is not optimal for the hangover, as Shelby drops into one of the chairs at the tiny vinyl table and presses the heels of her palms into her eyes to alleviate the pain. “I’m never drinking again,” she says, a little miserably, and Toni only smiles because she knows she can’t see her as she turns her back to hunt for clean crockery. She unearths two clean(ish) bowls from the back of the cupboard and produces them, as well as a half-empty box of cereal that one of Ally’s Barbies has been haphazardly crammed into. Toni picks it up by it’s pointed plastic foot and drops it on the counter.

“We only have normal milk,” she says. “Sorry if you’re, like—vegan.”

“I’m not,” Shelby says. She drops her head into the crook of her elbow and moans. “Ugh. Everything’s spinning.”

Toni pours her a bowl of cereal and then nudges it across the table. “Here.”

Shelby peers up through her curtain of hair and gratefully accepts her proffered spoon. “Thank you.”

Toni amusedly watches as she slides the bowl closer to her and squints down at it, like she’s trying to remember how one typically approaches it, and then starts making her own bowl. There’s not all that much left – she _does_ need to go grocery shopping, then – and she’d given the majority of it to Shelby, who probably is used to big breakfasts (and looked like she needs one today), but she doesn’t say anything, just pours herself the remaining crumbs without a word. She’s just considering whether or not she really should make a coffee, because in the unforgiving surround-light of the kitchen Shelby looks much worse, pale and pallid, with circles around her eyes that skirt more towards black than violet, when, then, from over Shelby’s shoulder, a door opens, and Linn herself comes out.

She doesn’t register Shelby at first, just nods at Toni in the curt, cursory way she always does when she’s awake before eleven as she shuffles past, noting with some distaste the Barbie on the sideboard, nudging the cereal box on the table towards her and squinting inside it, but then Shelby, from within her nest of hair, makes another pitiful sound, and instantly Linn’s beady gaze sharpens and swivels to Shelby.

Toni takes another spoonful of cereal, waiting. Shelby doesn’t appear to have noticed, still consumed in her cereal, but Linn watches her like a hawk for a long, long moment, before she finally whirls on Toni.

“For _Christ’s_ sake, Toni,” she snaps, “what have we said about bringing girls over?”

Toni nearly chokes on her cereal. “What?”

“Did you do it in front of Aliyah? You are so inconsiderate—”

“Jesus, Linn, she’s a _friend_!”

“Please stop shouting,” Shelby whispers plaintively. “I’ve got a really bad headache.”

Linn fixes her with an appalled look that Shelby misses, still hidden behind her hair, and then snaps her gaze to Toni, pointing at the hallway. Toni barely resisters the urge to slam her spoon down like a child as she stands up, chair scraping loudly against the linoleum. It’s only mostly accidental, and the way Linn’s eyes tighten bely just how acutely she notices, before she whirls around and stalks the three steps out of the tiny kitchenette.

“Who is that?” she demands in a low voice when Toni irritably follows her. They are barely five feet away from Shelby, but Shelby doesn’t give any indication she can hear, just slumps further down over her cereal like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Toni rolls her eyes.

“She’s just a friend, Linn.”

“She looks dreadful.”

“She just needed a place to crash last night.”

Linn narrows her eyes.

“ _What_?”

“You didn’t do anything?”

“Jesus, _no_!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me! I’m just asking.”

“I’m not having sex in front of Ally, _Jesus_ , Linn. We’re just friends.”

Linn regards her, wrapping her dressing gown tighter around her body. After a long pause, she says, “Did you drink anything?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty much.”

“Mm.” She doesn’t believe her, but Toni doesn’t have the energy to care. “You should make your friend some coffee. That’s meant to be good for hangovers.”

“I will.”

“How long will she be staying?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, she’s welcome to stay as long as she wants,” which Toni doesn’t buy for a fucking second, but she supposes she appreciates the sentiment. “I’ll be in my room with Joshua. You... have fun.”

She says _have fun_ in the way one might say _eat dirt_. Toni nods at her. “Cool. Thanks.”

Linn nods at her curtly, and then glances over Toni’s shoulder at where Shelby is sat, letting out a contemptuous _hm_ , which Toni doesn’t have the energy to decipher. She looks back at Toni, and then turns to go back into her room. She doesn’t slam her door, but it’s a near fucking thing.

“Your mom seems nice,” Shelby says hesitantly, when Toni drops sulkily back into her chair.

“She’s not my mom,” Toni mutters. She sees Shelby’s questioning look, and sighs. “Foster mom.”

“Ah,” Shelby says, with a nod of realisation. She looks down at her cereal, moving the cornflakes around with the tip of her spoon. “I see.”

Toni nods, jaw tense. Fuck, Linn couldn’t have just stayed in her room for even an _hour_ longer? They lock horns at least once a day, but did it have to be so early and did it have to be in front of _Shelby_? Toni’s gonna spend the rest of the day in a snit now, and it’s barely eight in the fucking morning. Thanks a fucking lot, Linn.

“So,” Shelby says, and Toni glances up. “We’re friends?”

Toni immediately feels the back of her neck heat. “Fuck off, Shelby.”

“No, no,” Shelby says, a smile beginning to spread across her face, “that’s what you said.”

“I couldn’t say _acquaintance who hates me_.”

“I don’t—” Shelby starts, but then she must see something on Toni’s face, and she sits up with a grin, pointing her spoon at her. “Don’t deflect! You said we’re friends.”

“Under duress.”

“Still said it. Admit it. We’re friends.”

“We’re not friends,” Toni defends stoutly, but mostly because it makes a delicious flush spread across Shelby’s face.

“We bonded and everything. And I slept in your bed. I think friend says it well.”

Toni heaves a sigh, but the sparkle in Shelby’s eyes tells her she knows just as well that’s for show. “Fine,” she allows. “I guess... I guess you’re okay.”

“Knew it,” Shelby says, grinning. “I guess you’re okay too.”

“Thanks for the rave review.”

“I’m just saying what you said.”

“At least I have redeemable qualities.”

“What, like a terrible affinity for polyester blend jerseys?”

“Fuck you,” Toni says, aiming a kick for her under the table, and Shelby squeals.

“Hey! I’m hungover, you can’t be mean to me.”

“Don’t start what you can’t finish,” Toni says, but when she looks back down at her cereal, she finds she’s smiling. After a moment, she feels Shelby’s foot tentatively nudge against her own, with a, “Hey—” and she looks up.

“Mm?”

“I just wanted to say thank you,” Shelby says, softer. “For... last night. My dad would’ve hit the roof if I came home like this. It was... really nice of you to take me home.”

“Oh.” Toni feels herself ease. “Yeah, of course.” All caution to the wind, she adds, “Anytime” and it’s worth the small smile that spreads across Shelby’s face. As she watches her duck her head and go back to her cereal, a thought hits her. “Hey, uh... how much do you remember? From last night?”

Shelby’s face shutters a little, and she ducks her head again. “Not a lot,” she admits. “Just... lots of blurs.”

Toni wants to ask, to push her for more – how much is not a lot? Does she remember Andrew? _Becca_? – but before she can, a floorboard creaks, and Shelby’s gaze shifts to a point somewhere over her shoulder. Toni frowns, and turns around, to see Ally hovering in the doorway, clutching at one of her Barbies, her mouth wide open.

“Morning, creep,” Toni says.

“Morning,” Ally whispers. She doesn’t look away from Shelby; she’s staring at her like she’s one of her dolls come to life.

Toni waits a generous amount of time, which for her is only a few seconds (she is not the most patient of people), before she says, “What do you want?”

Ally sidles up to Toni’s chair, holding her arm. The Barbie’s hair brushes under her chin. “Is she your girlfriend?” she whispers. Not very quietly. Toni doesn’t dare to look at Shelby for her reaction.

“No.”

“She’s _pretty_ ,” Ally says, voice hushed in awe.

Toni can’t help herself now, and glances across the table to where Shelby is sat. She looks like she’s about to melt through her chair. “Aw, thank you,” she says. “What’s your name?”

“Ally.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

Ally practically glows. “What’s yours?”

“Did you need something, Ally?” Toni says. This is cute and all, but she’s frankly had enough of people interrupting. “Maybe you’re looking for a lost doll or something?”

“I’m Shelby,” Shelby says, because clearly she’s an inconsiderate bitch. “You have the most beautiful eyes, Ally, has anyone told you that?”

Ally blushes, and ducks her head against Toni’s arm. To Toni, she whispers, “Can she play?”

“No,” Toni says. “Go away, creep, we’re busy. Here’s your doll.”

She thrusts the Barbie on the sideboard at Ally, who clutches at it, and fixes Toni with a stern look. “She’s a cereal princess, Toni, she has to live in the box.”

Toni shoves the box at her. “There.”

“It’s empty.”

“I’m not giving you a full one.”

“I don’t mind if she wants to play,” Shelby offers. Toni glances at her; she looks almost a little hopeful. “I have younger siblings and I volunteer at the kids’ creche at church too.”

Toni has to shake her head to physically dislodge the image of Shelby cross-legged on their living room floor, surrounded by all of Ally’s dolls, giving them all silly accents. “No, you’ll be here all afternoon,” she says. “And we should probably get going, anyway, so your parents don’t get too worried.” She gently nudges Ally. “Sorry, kiddo.” Ally looks so crestfallen, Shelby too, that she thinks _fuck it_ and says, “Maybe another time, yeah?”

Ally’s face brightens. “Really?”

“Really?” Shelby says.

“I’m not joining in, though,” Toni says. That must be all the confirmation Ally needs because she throws her arms around Toni’s side, her Barbies crushed in between them, with a happy squeal.

“Thank you, Toni!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Toni says, uncomfortably. She prises her off. “Okay, get lost, we need to go.”

“Bye, Ally,” Shelby says, with a wave. “Nice to meet you!”

Ally gives her a shy wave back, and then scarpers back into the living room, out of sight. Toni feels herself deflate in relief, and she turns to Shelby. “I’m so sorry about her—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Shelby says. “She’s cute.”

“You wouldn’t think so when she keeps putting her dolls in the cereal boxes.” Toni stands, and puts her bowl in the sink. “We should actually probably get going.”

Something almost like disappointment crosses Shelby’s face, but it’s gone so fast Toni’s sure she imagined it. “Oh. Yes, sure.”

She hands over her plate, which Toni also dumps in the sink. Shelby begins, “Do you need me to wash anything—” but Toni waves her off before she can, because while she tries to be as little a nuisance as possible, take up as little space as she can, she also likes to keep Linn on her toes. Instead, she grabs her jacket from where it’s strewn on the back of her chair, slides her arms into it, and then takes the key to her bike lock. “Come on, let’s go.”

The morning air is cool against their faces when they step outside. Too late, she remembers she’s still in her pajamas, but after a cursory glance down – old T-shirt and shorts – she deduces they’re not obvious enough as pajamas for her to go change, and instead zips her jacket right up. She leads Shelby to where her bike is chained to the picnic table she and Nicole had sat at all those weeks ago. _There’s this school play..._

A wry smile crosses her face as she unlocks her bike. If Toni then could see her now.

She only has one bike helmet, so she gives it to Shelby, who secures it to her head like it’s got a bomb on it. A strand of her long blonde hair gets caught in the buckle, and Toni has to quickly step in and unfasten it for her. It’s not until she hears Shelby swallow does she realise how close they’re stood, her fingers brushing the front of Shelby’s throat. Abruptly, she clears her throat and steps away, dropping the buckle like it’s red-hot.

“Sorry,” she says, a little awkwardly. “You just... had a hair.”

“It’s fine,” Shelby says, breathlessly. “Thanks.”

Toni busies herself with standing the bike upright as Shelby brushes her hair behind her shoulders and fastens it again. Then, when Shelby has finally managed to do it successfully (which takes another two tries – she is adorably hopeless – though Toni pointedly does not step in to help) she offers her the bike, and Shelby swings her leg over.

She looks so focused on doing it that Toni can’t help but laugh. “It won’t bite, you know,” she says, and Shelby gives her an epic bitch-face in response.

“I know that,” she says. “Just... will it hold two people?”

Toni would be a little insulted at the implication if she also wasn’t aware that her bike looked one particularly strong breeze away from falling apart. “Yeah, me and Martha ride it all the time. It’ll be fine.”

Shelby raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t push the matter; just tucks her legs up, lets Toni push off on one of the pedals, swing her own leg over, and then slowly move them away.

The journey isn’t a particularly long one, but Toni feels each minute like they last an hour. Shelby keeps her arms tight around her waist, pointy chin tucked in against the top of her spine, occasionally shouting directions into Toni’s ear. This early, the roads are practically empty; the only pass a handful of cars as they cruise down the main street, so Toni takes the deserted roads to mess with Shelby a little, doing zigzags down the street and attempting a wheelie that nearly sends them both careering to the ground. All the while, Shelby laughs in her ear, arms tightening around her whenever the bicycle wobbles like it’s about to overturn. By the time they pull into the driveway of the Goodkind house, Toni is at once relieved and disappointed the journey is over.

She steadies the bike on one foot as Shelby climbs off and then hands the helmet back to her. Toni puts it on her own head, at once surrounded by the scent of peaches and wine, and she has to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying something about it as she secures the buckle beneath her chin.

“Thanks again,” Shelby says. “Not just for the ride, but... for everything.”

“Yeah, no problem. Anytime.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other; can’t help the teasing note in her voice when she says, “So, is this going to become a habit, us sharing clothes every time you leave?”

Shelby glances down at her torso, like she’d completely forgotten that she was still wearing her jersey. At first, her expression shutters with panic, before she looks back up at Toni through her eyelashes, clearly gaging that she’s more amused. “I guess so,” she says, with a small smile.

Toni can’t help but return the smile, but before she can respond there comes a gruff, “Shelby?” from across the lawn, and they both turn to see an older man, presumably Shelby’s dad, stood in the doorway, expression inscrutable.

“Oh, that’s me,” Shelby says. She takes a step backwards, hands in her pockets. “See you Monday at school?”

Toni tries for a smile back, but their little bubble has been burst by this intruder, and she finds it isn’t very genuine. “Yeah. See you Monday, Peaches.”

Shelby gives her a small wave before she turns and scurries across the lawn towards the door. Her dad, a tall, stern-looking man in a polo shirt, greets her with a hand to the shoulder, and then the back, nudging her inside before she can turn and wave to Toni one last time. He turns to follow, but before he does, he pauses, casting one last look Toni’s way that she sends chills down her back.

Shelby Goodkind sure as hell may not be a homophobe – but her father certainly is.

Toni doesn’t wait to hear the door slam. She pushes off on one foot and pedals away as fast as she can, trying to ignore the scent of peaches that surrounds her as she goes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im not hugely happy with this chapter but i've been staring at it for too long so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

For some reason, either out of the goodness of her heart, or perhaps a move she is attempting to later leverage against them into a favour, Gretchen is taking the cast out on a field trip.

When Toni opens her emails to see _that_ in the subject line, she immediately switches her phone off without even reading the rest of the email. She doesn’t know what exactly a field trip with Gretchen entails, nor does she particularly want to, but she also isn’t putting an honest-to-God plane ride to Verona itself behind her and she’s not going anywhere near that. At least in rehearsals Gretchen is legally obligated to let them go by six.

As it turns out, however, the field trip is not a flight to Verona, nor is it even really a field trip at all. It’s instead tickets to a matinee performance of Romeo and Juliet by the esteemed theatre company, _the Twilight of Adam_.

“Not that I’m insinuating anything,” Toni says, when Dot reads Gretchen’s email aloud at rehearsal the next day, “but if I were to make a gay escort service that’s also what I’d call it.”

“Apparently it’s an all-male group,” Dot says. “I didn’t know Gretchen even knew what that meant.”

“All-male?” Fatin says, who is as predictable as the sun rising. “Um, count me _in_.”

Toni can’t help the laugh that escapes her. “Seriously?”

“Uh, _yeah_? Hot boys reciting Shakespeare? Tell me even your vagina doesn’t flutter a little.”

“Can’t say it does.”

Across the circle, Shelby meets Toni’s eyes and fondly shakes her head. Toni can’t help the way her lips twitch upwards in response.

Because—oh yeah, that’s now a thing that happens.

She wasn’t really sure what was going to happen on the Monday after Shelby slept over – in all honesty, she’d expected just more of the same: small nods and close-lipped smiles whenever they passed in the hallways; cool, civil conversations in rehearsals; Toni sometimes catching Shelby smiling at a joke she made. But it was like a switch had been flipped, because now Shelby greets her the same way she greets Martha, if a little shyer, like she’s unsure if Toni will allow it. They sit next to each other in rehearsals, even if Martha isn’t there, say hello when they pass in the halls. 

Toni isn’t sure, but she thinks this might be what friendship feels like.

“I think it’ll be fun!” Martha says. She must just completely miss the homoerotic undertones of an all-male theatre group performing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because she actually sounds like she actually means it. “If you guys are up for it, we can maybe all go for dinner before too? Like, as a group.”

“I’d be down for that,” Rachel says, to everyone’s surprise. With the way she acts at every rehearsal, as though she’s being held there at gunpoint and is seriously considering being shot, Toni would have thought that she would be the last person to be leaping at the prospect of willingly spending more time with them. Clearly everyone shares a similar sentiment, because even Nora is giving her an odd look. Rachel must notice the look of disbelief on their faces, because she squares her shoulders defensively. “What? I would.”

There’s a short pause, before Dot throws up her hands. “Oh, what the hell. Me too.”

Martha looks ecstatic. This sort of camaraderie is probably something out of her wet dreams. “Anyone else?”

Several other people chime in their various forms of assent – except, to Toni’s surprise, Shelby, who looks torn, chewing on her bottom lip. Toni can’t help herself, and gives her a small nudge. “You too, right, Peaches?”

Shelby startles a little guiltily, like she hadn’t realised anyone had noticed. “Oh, gee, uh, I don’t know. I mean, I’d love to go, but Thursdays are usually family dinner nights.”

“I’m sure you can miss it just this once.” Shelby still looks conflicted, so Toni changes tact. “I know Martha really wants you there.” She leans in. “Between you and me, she choreographed this whole thing just to have an excuse to get you alone.”

“You make it sound so creepy,” Martha says, which is also not a no. “It’s not like I want to harvest your organs or anything.”

Shelby’s lips quirk upwards. “Thanks for clarifying.”

“Besides, you _have_ to come. It’ll be so much fun, all of us together. We never really get a chance to hang out as a group outside of rehearsals, you know, without Gretchen. Oh, please come, Shelby, it won’t be fun without you there.”

Fatin looks like she resents this accusation. “Well, fuck you too.”

“It’s emotional warfare,” Toni tells her. “You know she doesn’t mean it.”

“So? What about _my_ emotional _wel_ fare?”

“Toni wants you there too,” Martha presses, and instantly the smile at Toni’s lips dies. “We were talking about it yesterday.”

Fuck. Toni had told her that _in_ _confidence_. She shoots her a warning look that she hopes conveys just how much she wants her to shut the fuck up, but Martha must not see it because she carries on obliviously.

“We’ve been wanting the three of us to hang out for ages, anyway,” she continues, “right, Toni?” and Shelby glances at her from under her eyelashes, green eyes glinting mischievously.

“Is that so?” she says, far too amused.

“I believe the exact phrasing was _whatever_ ,” Toni says, a little hotly, but Shelby’s growing smile tells her it’s mostly fallen on deaf ears. “I don’t particularly care.”

“I’m sure,” Shelby says amiably, but when she nudges their arms together, she lets it linger – just for a second. “I guess I’ll think about it, then. So I don’t break your heart.”

“Don’t get brave,” Toni says, but she’s smiling now, and can’t bite it back. In the corner of her eye she sees Martha’s eyes narrow, her gaze becoming sharp and thoughtful, and she has to tamp down the flare of panic that lights in her stomach.

There’s nothing to find out. Nothing to be afraid of being found out.

(Even Toni knows that’s horseshit.)

*

 _Dinner_ ends up being pizza a small Italian restaurant a fifteen-minute walk away from the theatre (twenty, if you’re meandering like Toni knows a group of a girls is bound to do). It’s a place Toni’s been before but she somehow still ends up running late anyway, barely managing to lace up her sneakers in her haste to catch the bus. By the time she arrives, jogging down the sidewalk, she can already see the group of them loitering outside the storefront, Dot cradling what looks like a six pack of soda. Martha’s the first to catch sight of her; her mouth forms the shape _Toni_ , and everyone turns to see her embarrassing jog of shame towards them.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” Martha says, when she’s near enough.

“Fuck – off,” Toni pants. She braces her hands on her knees, catching her breath. Months of doing basketball have apparently caught up to her. If only mental turmoil was a sport. “Sorry I’m late, I missed my bus.”

Martha waves her off. “Don’t worry, you’re actually just on time. We’re just waiting for Fatin’s pizza now.”

“Yeah, because her order required a fucking scroll to write down,” Dot says. “I think I saw the chefs load up a private jet to fly to Mexico to harvest half the ingredients.”

Fatin looks affronted at this accusation. “Okay, it’s not like I requested solid gold. All I asked for was gluten-free dough and extra pepperoncini.”

“Why are we waiting out here, then?” Toni says. “Can’t we eat inside?”

Martha rolls her eyes. “Apparently they don’t have enough seating for us,” she says, like the idea of a popular restaurant not having eight seats spare on a Thursday evening was entirely unprecedented. Toni is so very fond of her. “We’re getting it take-away and eating in the park instead.”

As if on cue, there’s another shuffle within the group as the final pizza box emerges from the doors of the restaurant by a disgruntled-looking waiter – god forbid Fatin had actually requested solid gold; apparently the extra pepperoncini was already a big enough hassle, judging by how irritated he looks – and once it’s been deposited in Fatin’s arms, and she’s guilted him into disappearing back into the restaurant and then re-appearing with a wad of napkins, the group of them set off, armed with their pizza boxes like they’re about to go to war.

Toni lets Martha lead the way, instead letting herself to the back of the group, shoving her hands in her pocket with no pizza to carry. She’s content to just be with herself and her thoughts, meandering behind them, until from next to her she feels a nudge against her arm, and looks up to see none other than Shelby walking alongside her.

Toni’ll deny it to the grave, but she’s privately a little happy to see her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Shelby says, with a small smile. Toni has to curl her hands in her pockets into fists so she doesn’t do something stupid like reach out and touch it. “Quite the entrance that was.”

“Well, what can I say. Had to prove I was more than just the set designer.”

Shelby huffs out a laugh. “Trust me, no one’s in danger of thinking otherwise.”

Toni isn’t sure what to say to that, because it sounds like a compliment, but it can’t possibly be so, so she just nods and shoves her hands deeper into her pockets. A short, companionable silence falls upon them. She counts seven beats before she next speaks.

“I didn’t think you were gonna make it tonight.” When Shelby glances questioningly at her, Toni quickly adds, “I mean, family dinner, right? Event of the week. You probably had your scheduled cleared just for it.”

Shelby shrugs, but there’s a smile playing at the edge of her lips. “Well, I couldn’t miss this.” Toni feels something in her almost turn in hope, but then she continues: “I mean, after everything Martha said about how much you _wanted_ me to come—”

“Oh, fuck off—”

“I just didn’t want to let you down, you know?”

“Well, don’t get it twisted. I just wanted to make fun of your pizza order.”

Shelby is nice enough to pretend to believe her. “ _Okay_ ,” she sings softly, and knocks their elbows together. It’s something Toni’s learnt she does a lot, like in the space their arms touch they’re exchanging secrets: an acknowledgment of what they’re not saying. _I’m glad you’re here_. Toni would never say it aloud, but Shelby doesn’t make her; just smiles at her like she knows, and then steps away to take the case of sodas from Dot as they step over the knee-high fence to the park.

The grass is mercifully dry when they sit, burdened with their cardboard boxes, sat in a ring like they’re about summon a pizza demon. Martha and Toni split one, as always, so Toni ends up between her and Nora; Nora, who gives her a small smile as she sits down, carefully folding in her knees and elbows like she’s making sure not to take up too much space. Toni finds the corner of her mouth quirking up a little in response like an instinct, though her mind is whirring.

Fuck. Has she gone and accidentally made friends of the lot of them? How embarrassing. (How... nice.)

“Fuuuuck,” Dot says, after her first bite. “Marty, this is fucking delicious.”

Martha preens. “Right? _Alfredo’s_ does the best pizza.”

“Hear, hear,” Toni says, already halfway through her slice. Whenever she’d sleep over at Martha’s and it was a special occasion, her mom would always get them a pizza from _Alfredo’s_. They’ve pretty much perfected their order by now (sausage and mushroom on one side for Toni, olive and pepper on the other for Martha). Someone cracks open the case of sodas and starts passing them around, so Toni takes a can for herself, which is when she then realises that it’s not a soda.

“You got _beer_?” Rachel says, turning the can in her hand. She actually sounds a little impressed. “How the hell did you manage that?”

“I have a fake ID,” Dot says.

“I’ve never been prouder of you, Dottie,” Fatin says, and Dot flips her off. “But hey, great minds!” From within her jacket she reaches in and produces a hip flask.

Leah starts to laugh. “No fucking way.”

“You brought alcohol?” Martha says.

“You think I’m going to get through this sober?” Fatin says, and takes a swig. “Ah. Fuck. That’s good. Anyone want? Toni?”

“I would, but I’m cutting carbs,” Toni says.

“You’re lucky you’re cute, Shalifoe, because you sure ain’t funny. But sure, be like that. More for me.” Fatin takes another swig. Toni would not be surprised if she’d been hiding it there all day; there have been a few times she’s caught sight of Fatin across a classroom and wondered if she was entirely sober. “Hey, we should, like, play a game or something.”

Dot sniggers. “How drunk _are_ you?”

“Fuck off, I’m serious! I feel like I don’t know you guys well enough – I mean, Leah, I didn’t even recognise you out in broad daylight not looking like you’re about to start crying.” Mouth full of pizza, Leah flips her off. “Come on, you’re my theatre bitches, let’s do a bit of soul searching.”

“Marty, check her temperature,” Toni says. “I think she and Shelby body-swapped.”

“I mean, I’m down for a little game, too,” Shelby says, to absolutely no one’s surprise. She’s passed on the beer, instead handing a can to Leah, who cracks it open and takes a long swig. “It’ll be fun!”

“Let’s do spin the bottle, then,” Dot goads.

Shelby goes pink, but thankfully Fatin steps in. “Dottie, if you wanted an excuse to get up close and personal, all you had to do was ask, baby girl. No, fuck that, let’s do ‘never have I ever’. Loser drinks out of my flask. Straight vodka.”

“You’re drinking straight vodka?” Toni says, impressed.

“It’s the only thing that gets me drunk these days. My tolerance accidentally got pretty impenetrable.” She sniggers to herself with a hiccup. “Heh. That’s what she said.”

“You know what?” Rachel says. “I’m down.”

Dot stares at her. “Who _are_ you?”

Rachel doesn’t respond, but there’s something of a pleased smile at her lips when she sits up straighter, holding up her beer like she’s about to make a toast. “Never have I ever... smoked a cigarette.”

Dot and Fatin take turns with Fatin’s flask. Dot, now cradling it, makes a considering noise. “Okay. Never have I ever... defaced an ex’s property.”

Dot isn’t a cruel person: it’s most likely a dig at Fatin, a seed out of a half-baked curiosity to see exactly how much they can get her to drink without her becoming noticeably drunk – but Toni still goes cold all over.

Martha glances sharply at her, quick and worried, and across the circle Shelby’s expression becomes concerned too; everyone else, half a second behind, presumably comes to the same realisation only moments later, because then the circle goes quiet – too quiet. Though she feels numb, Toni’s head lifts. Dot looks absolutely mortified.

“Shit, Toni,” she begins, “I’m _so_ sorry, I didn’t even think—”

“It’s okay.”

“Toni,” Martha starts.

“No, seriously,” Toni says, and plucks the hip flask out of Dot’s hand. She takes a long swig, feeling it burn down her throat. “To defacing cars, right?”

“Fuck yeah,” Fatin says, the only one who doesn’t look uncomfortably rooted to the spot, and takes the flask for herself. “Here’s to the rest of you being sane bitches. My turn now.”

The tension eases, and everyone huffs out laughter. Fatin, who apparently has done most things under the sun, struggles to come up with something; eventually settles on _read a book in the last year_ , to which only Leah, Nora and Shelby drink to. Nora’s turn now: she reveals a darkly humorous side and says _dated a man over twice my age._ Only Leah drinks, but she seems mostly awed that something like that came out of someone like Nora.

“You bitch,” she says, but somewhat begrudgingly impressed. “I thought you were meant to be nice.”

Nora shrugs a shoulder. “I thought it would make things interesting.”

“And it did, Jesus. It’s always the quiet ones. Okay, my turn.” Leah runs her finger around the rim of the flask, considering. Her long dark hair spills down one shoulder. “Okay, never have I ever... kissed a girl.”

“You’ve never kissed a girl?” Fatin says.

“Why do you sound surprised?”

“You exude bisexual vibes. Right, Toni?”

“How would I know?” Toni says.

“Uh, because you’re gay?”

“It’s not like sonar, Fatin, we’re not dolphins.” She waves her hand at Leah. “Pass it over, then.”

Everyone whoops as Leah hands the flask over and Toni takes a long drink. It’s beginning to run low, no more than a few drops left, so she has to tilt the flask until it’s almost upside-down to chase the remnants, and she hears Martha, who probably is a little drunk herself, hoot.

She cracks her eyes open just as she pulls it away from her mouth, and catches a glimpse of Shelby quickly looking away, her ears pink, her expression unreadable. She frowns, but before she can say anything Fatin pushes up on her knees makes a grab for the flask, to absolutely no one’s surprise. “Come on, Shalifoe, don’t be greedy.”

Toni’s also probably a little tipsy from the beers; at least, that’s what she reasons with herself when instead of handing the flask over like a normal person she tips the rest into Fatin’s mouth herself. The whoops grow even louder.

“I feel like I’m at a strip club,” Leah says.

“We’re just warming up for the actual performance,” Fatin says. “I’m expecting jockstraps.” She takes the flask from Toni and shakes out the last few drops onto the grass, and then stands. “Which I think may be our cue to start heading in the direction of the theatre. Anyone have the time?”

“Just turned six,” Rachel says. “Show’s in half an hour.”

“All right, we should probably get going, then. Everyone make sure they’ve got their phones, I don’t want to have to haul ass with any of you back here when it’s dark.”

There is some groaning as everyone protests, but they all heave themselves up. Martha, who is tipsy enough to have to attempt to stand twice, clutches her and Toni’s emptied pizza box like it’s a toy, though thankfully stays put (she is a notoriously a bit of an adventurous drunk). Toni cracks open a water bottle and hands it to her, after she’s had a long drink herself first. When she looks up, she sees that Shelby’s stepped closer.

There is something a little off about her expression; she looks almost ill. Toni thinks of the way she quickly glanced away earlier, like she had just been caught looking at something wrong, and she feels her chest prick with concern. “Hey, you okay?”

“Hm?” Shelby starts a little, like she’s just emerged from a reverie and just drifted over on autopilot. “Oh, yeah. I think I might have drunk a little too much.”

She didn’t touch any of the beers and only sipped the vodka. “If you throw up on me during the performance I’ll kick your ass,” Toni says. Shelby’s laugh comes out genuine but half-hearted, and Toni properly frowns now. “Okay, seriously, are you feeling all right? You look like shit.”

“I’m fine,” Shelby says, but Toni doesn’t fail to notice how she straightens, sets her shoulders back, like she’s orchestrating a front. Toni remembers all those weeks ago in Martha’s car, Shelby and her clear, thoughtful gaze staring out the window, the most real and vulnerable she’d ever seen her. She’s back to plastic Shelby now. She nudges Toni gently. “Are you showing genuine worry?” she teases. “Careful, Toni, I’ll start to think that we’re actually friends.”

Toni doesn’t respond. Shelby’s face softens.

“Walk with me?” she says. “We can pretend it’s for Martha’s sake, to keep up your image.”

Toni knows when she’s being asked to drop something. “Okay.”

But she can’t get the look on Shelby’s face out of her head, even as they start walking. There had been something almost ashamed in it, flushed red with embarrassment, ears red-tipped, but there was something else, too, something in the way her head was turned away so all Toni could see was the blush high on her cheeks, the way her hand had just started to retreat back from where it inched forward—

Something almost like determination; almost like she was reaching for the flask.

*

The play, surprisingly, is pretty damn good. It’s also the most sexual thing Toni’s ever seen.

Toni can see Gretchen’s surmounting irritation with them all as the play wears on, but she can’t particularly find it in herself to care: Gretchen should have known that the last thing to be appreciated when bringing a group of teenage girls to watch a performance which consists solely of muscular men in tights and what also looks like cooking oil (they are so shiny the stage lights actually hurt a little as they reflect off them) was the _theatre_ of it all. Toni’s sat in between Fatin and Martha, who are both practically at the edge of their seats as they watch them, rapt; Toni herself couldn’t care less, and instead amuses herself how much margarine Romeo and Juliet – or Julien, she guesses – applied beforehand to make them glisten so much. She’s surprised they don’t slip right off each other during the love-making scene. (More surprised Fatin doesn’t slip out of her seat. Martha does.)

Toni would maybe feel a little bad for the actors with how blatantly the girls are ogling them if she couldn’t tell they were practically basking in the attention. During the balcony scene, Fatin honest-to-god wolf-whistles, and even though Gretchen immediately starts hissing about theatre etiquette and _how dare she_ Romeo shoots her a wink as he scales the trellis. Fatin basks.

In fact, the only one who seems to be as disinterested as Toni is Shelby. Most of the girls are practically draped over the railing, their asses barely touching their seats, so when Toni, who is reclining back, her feet propped on the railing instead, glances to the side, she’s a little surprised to see Shelby a few seats down in a similar position (though with both feet on the ground, because unlike Toni she also has manners.) Shelby must feel her gaze because she turns her head a few moments later and they make eye contact.

 _Having fun?_ Toni mouths.

Shelby flips her a pained thumbs-up, and Toni grins.

At the curtain call, it’s their group that claps and cheers the loudest, so much so that in her excitement Jeanette accidentally drops her half-finished popcorn box down onto the poor unfortunate audience-members below. Gretchen doesn’t even applaud, just sits there looking like she has a headache and wants to leave. The cheers get even louder, when, as the cast move to leave the stage, Romeo blows a kiss towards them.

“This was the best idea you’ve ever had,” Fatin says to Gretchen, who looks like she’s considering following in the footsteps of Jeanette’s popcorn box. “I’ve never been more passionate about _Romeo and Juliet_ before in my life.”

All’s to say, Toni would not be surprised if she cancelled after-school rehearsals tomorrow. She probably needs an extended weekend to recover.

Everyone’s still vibrating with excitement as they spill out of the theatre afterwards. The night air is considerably cooler than it was a few hours ago when they were all in the park, but it doesn’t appear to dampen their spirits: if anything, they only get more jittery, bouncing up and down either out of excitement or a need to keep warm. Martha keeps her arm linked with Toni’s and keeps chattering about how cool it was, how fit all the boys were, how much she enjoyed it. Even though Toni certainly wasn’t as invested in the cute boys as she was, her excitement is still infectious, and she finds herself smiling and laughing along with them, even when Gretchen throws her scarf around her neck and announces that she’s going home and that she wishes them all a safe journey home, even though it’s said with enough scorn to suggest that she wouldn’t mind it if they all got killed in a car crash.

“It was about time the old bat left,” Fatin says, rubbing her hands together to keep warm. “Who wants to come with me to the stage door? I want to see if I can get Romeo’s number.”

Dot sighs. “I’ll come too. I need to make sure you don’t do anything illegal.”

Fatin feigns ignorance. “Illegal, _me_?”

“Oh, me too!” Martha says. “I want to ask him how he did that pirouette, I’ve been trying to do something similar for ages but I can’t get the right momentum.”

“Atta girl, Marty, knew I had an ally in you,” Fatin says. “Anyone else? Toni, Shelby? Wonder Twins, what about you?”

“Curfew, sorry,” Rachel says, not looking particularly sorry. “But you guys have fun.”

“Tell Juliet I didn’t think his costume was very historically accurate,” Nora says.

“Yeah, I should probably be heading home, too,” Toni says. Linn hasn’t enforced any proper curfews – mostly as long as she’s there when she wakes up is all she cares about – but it’s been a long day, and as much as Toni likes hanging out with them her social battery is ticking dangerously low. “See you guys tomorrow, yeah?”

“See you!” everyone chimes. Martha gives her a big hug and makes her promise to text her when she gets home, like she always does, and then Toni’s off, back towards the bus stop.

It’s verging on the side of too chilly, Toni’s thin jacket not providing enough protection against the breeze that’s suddenly picked up. She wraps her arms around her tighter, hunching her shoulders to fend off the chill. The bus stop is only a short distance away, backlit in the darkness by a nearby lamppost, but the windchill makes it a merciless journey. By the time she arrives, her bus is scheduled to arrive in only a couple minutes, so she sits down on the bench and blows in her palms, trying to warm herself.

Even after the excitement of the evening, she still can’t get the look on Shelby’s face out of her mind. She wonders what’s going on; if she’s okay.

As her thoughts spin, she becomes aware of someone joining her at the bus stop, pausing in front of the screen to see when the next bus is, but she barely pays them any mind, just hunching over to try and fend off the wind. It’s not until she hears the faint rumble of the bus approaching and stands in anticipation that she comes face-to-face with Shelby herself.

“Shelby?” she says.

Shelby looks as equally surprised to see her. “Toni. Hi.”

“Hey.”

Toni is aware that she is stood very close, and immediately takes a step back, letting out an awkward cough. Her breath forms cool clouds in the air.

“I didn’t know you were going this way,” is all she can think to say.

Shelby smiles at her. This one, at least, looks a little more real. “Yeah. I just caught the right bus on the way here.”

“Fuck off.” But now Toni’s smiling too. “You didn’t stay for the stage door?”

Shelby lifts a shoulder. “Ah, no. I... didn’t really care that much.”

“What, Romeo and his tights didn’t do it for you?”

Her smile is lit by the headlights of the approaching bus. “Apparently not.”

There is a brief pause in conversation as they fumble with cold fingers for their passes as the bus doors creak open. Toni lets Shelby go before her, barely catching a glimpse of the photo on her ID – head thrown back in laughter, long blond hair pulled back in two braids – before it gets tucked back in her pocket.

It’s just late enough that rush hour is beginning to peter out, but not enough that there are any available seats, so Toni and Shelby stand huddled together against a window, rocking in tandem with the bus as it wheezes down the street. A seat opens up next to them a few stops down the line, but Shelby makes no move to take it even though she’s the closest, instead letting another passenger sit down, and for the first time it properly hits Toni: they’re _friends_. That Shelby won’t sit down unless there’s a seat for Toni, too; that she’d rather stay standing with her even though her feet must hurt in those ridiculous sandals than sit down alone.

The realisation rocks Toni more than it should. She glances at Shelby, who is talking to an older woman trying to get past; with the bus so tightly packed, Shelby practically has to step chest-to-chest with Toni to let her through, though her face is turned towards the woman, lips twisted up into a friendly smile as the woman thanks her. She’s a few inches taller than her, so Toni’s nose brushes her jaw. She holds herself as still as she can to stop herself from pressing closer.

They stay like this for a few more moments, until the doors have slid closed and the bus begins to move again, and then Shelby turns back to face her. They are so close Toni can feel her breath on her temple.

Uncomfortably, she clears her throat, and Shelby immediately takes a step back.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s really crowded in here, huh?”

Her voice is pitched low and teasing, just something for the two of them. “Mm,” Toni says.

“Did you have fun tonight?”

The bus rattles over a speedbump, and everyone sways in tandem. Toni considers it. “Surprisingly, yeah, actually.”

“Was it the company?”

“Well, it wasn’t the naked men.”

Shelby barks a laugh at that, too loud for such a small, tired bus. She pinches her lips shut immediately afterwards, ears colouring, but she steadies herself with her fingers loosely clasped around Toni’s wrist, swaying into her. Toni’s learned a lot about Shelby as they’ve become closer, the most notable being she’s not sure where she got the idea that she was aloof and cold because she’s the biggest fucking nerd she’s ever met, but another being just how tactile she is. She guesses she’s always known this, saw it with the way she would always link her arms with Martha, or touch her hand when she wanted to tell her something, but she had always been so clouded with jealousy and irritation that she never thought what it’d be like to be on the receiving end of it herself.

And it’s actually... nice. It’s really nice. (She’d be caught dead before she ever voluntarily linked arms, though.)

“Did you?” she says, belatedly. “Have a good time?”

“Yeah, it was a lot of fun.”

“It was the naked men, right?” Shelby scrunches up her nose, and Toni sniggers. “Okay, not so much, but did it help, in any case? Do you now feel inspired with your own portrayal of Juliet?”

“Definitely not,” Shelby says. “I feel like everyone was sort of... unnecessarily lubed up.”

“They looked like they’d been sprayed with Pam.”

Shelby giggles. “Yeah, exactly. I was afraid they would get to close to one of the stage lights and catch fire.”

Toni grins at her, always a little delightedly surprised whenever Shelby makes a dorky joke, but before she can respond the bus stops, and the doors slide open. “This is Montgomery Street,” a tinny voiceover announces over the intercom. “Mind the gap when alighting.”

“Oh, this is me,” Shelby says. Toni tries not to pay too much attention to the part of her that is disappointed. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Shelby smiles at her, and then makes a move to step off – but just as she does, one foot out of the bus on the pavement, she pauses, and then turns back around.

“Do you want to come in?” she says. “I still have your T-shirt.”

Toni is so surprised that for a few moments her mouth forgets how to form words. Then, from the front of the bus, the driver makes an irritated sound, and says, “In or out, kid, I’ve got a schedule to keep”, and Toni makes a snap decision.

“Uh, yeah. Okay. Sure.”

It doesn’t even hit her, what she’s doing, until she steps off the bus too and hears the doors snick shut behind her, and then the faint groan of the engine as it pulls away, leaving her and Shelby stood on the street. It’s suddenly a lot darker now, the almost painfully bright fluorescent lights of the bus disappearing as the bus turns around a corner and out of sight.

If Shelby notices her inner turmoil, she doesn’t mention it, just smiles at her, nudges their arms together again. “Coming?”

And what else does Toni have to do? “Yeah, sure.”

It’s only a short walk up to Shelby’s house, which somehow feels even bigger in the night-time. Toni feels almost _shy_ following her up the path to the front door, which is fucking ridiculous, but she can’t help it: at school, it’s easy enough to pretend that Shelby is just like her, but like this, when she’s staring up the three storeys of the house, and the windowsill pot plants, and the fucking garden gnomes, the discrepancy between them becomes all the more apparent. As Shelby unlocks the door, Toni casts a glance down at her grubby sneakers in a moment of shame. Fuck. What did she just do? Why didn’t she just say _no_?

Inside is even worse. Everything is shiny and white, like something out of a home décor magazine. Shelby is oblivious, stepping over the threshold and kicking off her shoes, beckoning Toni to do the same, so she does, hesitantly, feeling like everywhere she’s stepping she’s dirtying. Her socks have holes in them, one on her big toe, another worn almost transparent under her heel. The tiles of the hallway are cold against her bare skin, and she automatically turns her feet in.

She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so out of place before. Fuck. Why is she here?

Shelby turns to her, but before she can say anything a woman appears in the doorway of what Toni can only assume to be the kitchen. Shelby’s mom, Toni guesses, because she has her eyes and nose, though unlike her daughter her blond hair is shaped into a bob, but she can’t be too sure because she also looks like she’s just emerged from a catalogue. “Shelby, is that you?” she says, and then her eyes fall upon Toni. “Oh, you’re not my daughter.”

Toni thinks that was a joke, but she doesn’t laugh, because she’s learned not to trust adults. “Um, no.”

“Mom, this is Toni,” Shelby says. “She’s just coming to pick up a shirt.”

Shelby’s mom smiles at her. “Well, hello, Toni, it’s nice to meet you.” Toni doesn’t know how to respond, so she just nods. There is a short pause, Shelby’s mom looking expectant, and it’s too late that Toni realises she was meant to say something. “Well," Shelby's mom says, finally, "I’ll leave you girls to it. Don’t be too late, you have school tomorrow. Toni, will you be needing a ride home?”

“Oh, uh.” Toni suddenly feels very awkward. “No, thanks. I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Shelby says. “Toni, come on, I’ll show you my room.”

Toni lets herself be pulled away up the stairs. There are photos hung all over the walls – Shelby and her family, all smiling, looking straight out of a fucking magazine. Her dad, the eagle-eyed man from the front door, is in a lot of them too, but even just looking at him makes something almost akin to discomfort skirt up her spine. Though it’s been almost a whole week since then, she can’t get his look in his eyes out of her head, the way his gaze had sharpened on her as he touched Shelby’s back – like he was pushing her inside. Away from her.

It’s not a big town – the news of the accident had spread, even if the only damning article written about it had been pulled from the website only a few days later. Most don’t know it’s about her specifically, just that it happened, but Toni’s seen both of Shelby’s parents at enough PTA meetings to realise that they both probably know the specifics – which means they probably know she’s gay, too. Shelby’s mom’s face had betrayed nothing: she probably didn’t even recognise her, or maybe she’s just good at pretending.

But Shelby’s dad had made it clear his stance just from the look on his face. Toni hopes he’s not home.

“So, this is me,” Shelby says, oblivious to Toni’s inner turmoil. She holds open the door to a room just off the landing, letting Toni step past her into it, and then follows her in, continuing to talk. “Sorry about the mess, I didn’t really get a chance to tidy it this morning...”

Toni surveys her room, which probably has double the square footage of Linn’s entire trailer. “Yeah, this is seriously the pits, Peaches.”

Shelby sheepishly smiles at her as she paces across the room to her big wardrobe. “Your shirt should be in here somewhere,” she says. “You can sit on my bed if you want.”

Toni does, dropping down unceremoniously onto it. There is a rather obscene mountain of pillows, each one a different shade of pastel and appliqued with a heart, or a Bible quote, and she steals one to prop under her arms as she rolls onto her stomach, kicking her legs up and crossing her heels like a pin-up girl. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” she reads aloud. “That’s cute.”

“What, you don’t think so?”

“I’m not fuckin’ fearful, thanks.”

“Not fearful like that. It means reverent, or with great honour.” Shelby makes a considering noise, and shifts through another hanger. “It should be here _somewhere_...”

Toni takes the lapse in conversation to take in the rest of her room. While the rest of the house is cold and impersonal, every surface gleaming white like it’s never been lived in, Shelby’s bedroom feels like an extension of her: and not the plastic, pretend Shelby she puts on at school, the veneer of poise Toni sees whenever she catches a glimpse of her across the cafeteria at lunch, laughing with Andrew and the rest of her friends, but the real Shelby. The dresser across the room is crammed with things, books and spare pens and perfumes and make-up, a string of necklaces and scarves draped over the front of the mirror like a hanger, and the walls are littered with photos. Toni shifts forward to touch one of the frames on the bedside table, something made of lollipop sticks and glitter, and then she properly registers the picture inside it, and frowns, drawing it closer.

It’s Shelby back in the cornflower-blue dress from her profile picture, except in this photo there’s a girl with dark curly hair standing next to her, both arms slung around Shelby’s waist, her face split in a grin. Toni touches Shelby’s face. She doesn’t think she’s seen her this happy before.

“Who’s this?” she says, and Shelby turns. “In the picture?”

Shelby lets go of the hanger she was holding and kneels on the bed next to Toni, peering at the picture. Her long blonde hair brushes against the side of Toni’s face. “That’s my friend Becca.”

Toni goes very still.

_Today is her anniversary._

_Whose?_

_Becca’s._

This is the friend who died.

Toni glances up at Shelby carefully. She claimed she didn’t remember much of that night, and what she did had been fuzzy – could she somehow have forgotten mentioning this, too? Toni looks back down at the picture, at their wide smiling faces.

“I didn’t know you did pageants,” she says, because she’s a coward.

Shelby huffs a laugh and drops down onto her elbows next to her. Their forearms brush. “Miss Texas 2018,” she says. “I prepared for ages for that. I didn’t eat cheese for two months.”

“Jesus.”

“Becca did it with me,” Shelby says. Her voice is soft, tinged with something like sadness, but also something fond. “Not the pageant, but the dieting. She said it would suck less if we did it together.”

“Did it?”

“Not really,” Shelby says. “But it was nice of her.”

Toni twists her mouth consideringly. In the picture, Becca’s face is so vibrant, so _alive_ , it’s hard to imagine that she’s dead. The top of her curly hair brushes Shelby’s chin. For the first time Toni realises that Shelby’s life isn’t as perfect as it seems. Sure, Toni’s lost people too – but she was never this happy with her parents. She can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a best friend.

She can’t help herself now. “The night... at Fatin’s party,” she says. “You mentioned Becca.”

Shelby’s voice is careful. “What did I say?”

“That she... died.” She risks a glance at Shelby’s face, and sees her gaze turn distant, fixing at a point somewhere across the room. It’s evident that she hadn’t remembered at all. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything—”

“No, it’s okay,” Shelby says. “It was a while ago.”

Toni watches her carefully. “You said... it was her anniversary. That night.”

“Her first one. Yeah.”

“Is that why you weren’t at school?”

There is a long moment before Shelby nods.

“I’m sorry,” Toni says, inanely. She doesn’t know what else to say. The corner of Shelby’s mouth ticks up a little, like she knows.

“Not your fault,” she says. She takes the frame from Toni’s hands and runs a finger down Becca’s face; so, so gently, like she’s alive under her touch.

Toni waits.

Finally, Shelby expels a breath. “She committed suicide,” she says quietly. “Hung herself. She used one of our skipping ropes. Her mom found her just as she died.”

“Fuck.” Toni can’t even imagine what that would even feel like.

“Becca was... troubled.” It’s not her word; she says it like it’s someone else’s. “She’d had a hard year before, and had been sent away for a bit. Drugs, and stuff. It wasn’t her fault; she had a brother who...” She doesn’t finish her sentence, just curls her hand into a fist. “Well, it doesn’t matter. That’s what they blamed it on. The hard year, I mean. The drugs.”

Toni watches her. “You... don’t think so?”

Shelby’s throat moves. It is a long, long pause before she speaks again. “No.”

Toni waits.

“Fuck,” Shelby says, and sits up. She puts her hands in her lap. “I don’t know. She was my best friend, and we... we loved each other. But I think I—” She stops, abruptly. Her throat works. “For her it turned it something more. Something deeper.”

Oh. “Did she...”

“She kissed me,” Shelby says, all in a rush. “And I—I mean, I’m not gay, or anything, but—”

_I was so fucking mean, Toni. I’m so sorry. I was so bad. I was such a bad person._

Toni’s voice is barely above a whisper. “But?”

Shelby’s mouth forms a shape, but then, after a beat, she purses her lips, and clears her throat. “Nothing. Just... I think maybe that had something to do with it, too. Me saying no.” Her fingernails work over the denim at her knee, back and forth, and Toni doesn’t fail to notice the way she straightens as she pastes a smile on. _Lies_. “But she’s found peace now. And, um, you know—” She casts a nervous glance at Toni, almost like she’s checking with her about something—“ _I’m_ not...”

“Gay?” Toni says mildly. “I know.”

The breath Shelby lets out is one that’s part relief – and part something else. “You do?”

“One kiss doesn’t mean you’re gay.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” Abruptly, Shelby climbs off the bed. “Um, I’m going to keep looking for your shirt – I know it’s here somewhere.”

Toni blinks at the sudden shift in tone. “Uh... yeah, okay.”

Shelby shoots her a small, close-lipped smile before she heads back over to the wardrobe, quickly flicking through the rest of her hangers. Toni watches her back for a few moments before looking back down at the photo.

That at least explains why it looked like she was about to drink earlier – because she _had_ kissed a girl before. A girl who committed suicide because of it. Something tightens in Toni’s chest just at the thought. She’s been through shit, being carted from foster home to foster home, but being gay was something she’d always known, something she’d always been comfortable with. Sure, it’s been used against her, and she’s used it against others, but she can’t imagine what it would be like to grow up in an environment where something like that was stifled, where she wasn’t allowed to know it about herself.

She looks down at the pillow. _I am fearfully and wonderfully made_. She runs a finger over the stitching.

But.

_I was so fucking mean, Toni. I’m so sorry. I was so bad. I was such a bad person._

She’s never seen Shelby smile like that, either – except on the bus, when she’d thrown back her head in laughter. Except at rehearsals, a fond exchange across the circle. Except when she’d had her arms looped around her waist on the bike, laughing in her ear.

Except around Toni.

Treacherously, Toni wonders if Becca had kissed her at all; if maybe, just maybe... Shelby kissed her first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise things will graduate from emotionally charged conversations lmao
> 
> also updates may slow down because of school! apologies in advance :-]

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed! lmk what you thought :-]
> 
> i can't promise super regular updates but i will certainly try!


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